Conical slipforming
Originally, this technology was developed for constant cross sections with precise vertical orientations. It was then developed further for variable layout shapes.
Specially developed for the construction of conical towers and industrial chimneys at the beginning of the 1970s, conical slipforming offers a monolithic construction of decreasing and increasing layouts without any steps.
For slipforming variable cross-sections, horizontally moveable formwork structures are used. These are mounted on hydraulically adjustable tapering elements.
The overhead girder star with its centre piece forms the central point of the tower and connects all main beams to a uniform, closed scaffolding.
At the same time it serves as an upper work platform. Depending on the diameter of the structure and the maximum, high gridshaped lattice girders, welded castellated beams or even simple H-Beams are used.
Despite the use of exact geometry lists describing the tapering in theory, building a conical tower requires a great deal of intuition and experience from our slipform specialists.
It also proves that men, and not machines, are the measure of all things. Many factors influence the final geometric accuracy of the construction to be slipformed. Despite all technical advances, it is still not possible to precalculate all parameters. This is due to the different material properties of concrete in different parts of the world. This could be the reason why Gleitbau Salzburg is the only company worldwide offering conical slipforming.