The BelAZ 75710 is the world’s largest dump truck, with a load capacity of up to 450 tons and is made of advanced high-strength steel.
This massive 360-ton truck costs $6 million each, has six times the power of a Formula 1 car and is over 20 meters long. The BelAZ 75710 is equipped with two 16-cylinder four-stroke diesel engines, each producing 2,300 horsepower, which provide power to four electric motors for a maximum speed of 64 km/h.
Carrying large amounts of cargo requires a lot of fuel, and the 75710’s diesel consumption is estimated at 1,300 liters per 100 kilometers, but when not loaded, only one engine is used to save fuel.
Resource efficiency is a core design principle of the world’s largest dump truck.
Bigger is better
Manufacturer BelAZ created this giant truck to improve productivity in quarries and mines. By designing a truck with a load capacity 25% greater than conventional dump trucks, they were able to keep fuel consumption to a minimum, thus reducing the cost per truck.
“Our main motivation was to create the largest dump truck that could deliver the highest load capacity with the lowest fuel consumption,” said Leonid Trukhnov, chief mining truck designer at BelAZ.
Achieving this goal was a tough engineering challenge. Increasing the payload usually requires a corresponding increase in the size of the tires, and tires large enough were not in supply, so BelAZ’s solution was to change the 75710’s weight distribution.
About 70% of the payload of conventional dump trucks is on the rear axle, and in order to increase the payload, this weight had to be evenly distributed across the truck’s frame.
To achieve even weight distribution, the 75710 has four tires each at the front and rear, with a removable axle system that can be adjusted depending on the payload.
Because of the specific requirements for the 450-tonne load, advanced high-strength steel was selected to make the truck’s rotating bracket, which connects the frame and axles to form the suspension system.
“When we started discussing the movable suspension, we found that high-strength steel was the best choice,” said Vladimir Zagorsky, director of BelAZ’s suspension design engineering department. “The design required four tires at the front and back, plus four-wheel drive, which required a new suspension solution.”
The steel used in the axle suspension system is Weldox 700F, manufactured by Swedish Steel, which can reduce thickness while maintaining the ability to handle huge loads. Weldox’s extremely high strength and high weldability mean that the components can be prefabricated by Swedish Steel and then assembled at the BelAZ plant in Belarus.
The truck’s frame is made of a welded structure of Hardox 450, another high-strength steel produced by Swedish Steel, which makes the body extremely resistant to wear, fatigue and impact.
The 75710 is the pinnacle of heavy-duty trucks, capable of operating in harsh conditions of -60°C and nearly 5 km above sea level. It also outperforms its closest competitor by 90 tonnes in terms of payload capacity.
Transporting such a huge load and delivering efficient power would not be possible without advanced high-strength steel, the core material for manufacturing these super dump trucks.
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