Turkish road contractor Gulsan is working on a 40-km highway rehabilitation project in Turkey using a recently-delivered Wirtgen 2000DC cold milling machine. Gulsan is aiming to mill 700-800 m day over three lanes of the busy E80 Istanbul to Ankara highway, from Gebze junction to Izmit, with the machine.

Starting at Gebze, the contractor closes the entire carriageway in 3 km sections and diverts traffic to a contraflow system on the west-bound carriageway.

The 2000DC mills the existing surface to a depth of 23 cm in three passes with a cutting width of 2 m. For the first two cuts, the milling depth is set to 5 cm deep and the final cut is 13 cm deep. According to a spokesman for Gulsan, this is done because of the difference in hardness between the road layers. Milling speeds range from 5 to 15 m/min, he says.

Designed for removing individual pavement layers or complete carriageways to a depth of 30 cm in a single pass, the 25-tonne 2000DC is the most popular milling machine in Turkey - even the Turkish Highways Department owns two, says Franz Mantel of the Germany-based manufacturer Wirtgen.

Power is provided by a 297 kW engine, which drives the four hydraulic crawlers and the milling drum. After the milling operation, Gulsan resurfaces the road the following day using two of the six Vogele pavers in its fleet of equipment. The company expects to reach Izmit by October at the end of the contracting season. It will start work in the opposite direction next year.