IN Brief:
- Liebherr France has invested almost €2.5m in a crawler excavator test facility at Colmar.
- The bench reproduces vibration, impact, bending, and torsional forces under repeatable conditions.
- Autonomous operation allows long test cycles while supporting development of increasingly automated machines.
Liebherr has commissioned a crawler excavator test bench at its Colmar development and production site following an investment of almost €2.5m.
The facility allows Liebherr France to reproduce working stresses under controlled conditions and accelerate the ageing of excavator structures. One hour on the bench can represent approximately 17 hours of operation on a construction site.
Machines are subjected to repeated vibration, torsion, impact, and bending loads based on information collected during customer operations. Engineers can use the resulting data to identify structural weaknesses and assess design changes before progressing to further field trials.
The installation consists of a test track and trench inside an enclosed hall. A concrete wall and six metre high acoustic barriers limit noise transmission to the surrounding industrial estate.
Planning took around nine months, followed by seven months of construction. Liebherr manufactured most of the mechanical steel assemblies internally, allowing the infrastructure to be adapted closely to the requirements of its excavator development teams.
Machines operate autonomously during testing, while engineers supervise cycles from an external control room using cameras and monitoring systems. The arrangement removes the need for an operator to remain inside the excavator during repetitive and severe loading.
Protection measures include a secured physical area, controlled gates, door contacts, laser sensors, machine tracking, and geofencing. Together, the systems are designed to prevent autonomous equipment from leaving the defined test zone.
Shortening the machinery development cycle
Construction equipment has traditionally been validated through calculation, prototype testing, endurance work, and customer trials. Field testing remains essential because real sites produce combinations of ground, attachments, operator behaviour, weather, and loading that cannot be reproduced completely.
A dedicated bench provides repeatability by allowing the same cycle to be run on different components or revised structures. Performance can therefore be compared without relying on separate field trials encountering identical conditions.
Accelerated testing can expose fatigue problems earlier. A weakness that might take months to appear during normal use can emerge within a compressed programme, giving designers time to modify a casting, weld, plate, joint, or mounting before the machine enters series production.
Earlier validation also reduces the risk of structural failure during customer operation. Breakdowns can stop work, create recovery costs, damage attachments, and expose operators or nearby personnel to danger, while warranty campaigns carry substantial financial and reputational cost.
Autonomous operation forms an important secondary function of the Colmar investment. Repetitive cycles provide a controlled environment in which machines can follow defined movements without a driver, giving engineers practical experience of sensors, control logic, position monitoring, and safe stop systems.
Autonomous functions are beginning to move from demonstrations towards practical deployment. The use of an autonomous excavator in live operating work shows how manufacturers are applying machine control to repeated production tasks.
Full autonomy will not suit every construction site because temporary layouts, changing ground, mixed traffic, nearby workers, and incomplete digital information create a less controlled environment than a quarry, mine, or enclosed test facility.
Assisted functions are likely to expand more quickly. Grade control, movement limits, collision avoidance, automated digging cycles, payload management, and attachment recognition can reduce repetitive inputs while leaving the operator responsible for the wider task.
Those capabilities increase the burden on validation because software and sensors must operate alongside hydraulic, mechanical, and structural systems. An error can affect both machine performance and physical movement, requiring test facilities to examine combined behaviour rather than treating electronics and structures separately.
The Colmar bench also creates a direct feedback loop between testing and production engineers. Locating the facility at the development site should reduce the delay between identifying a weakness, manufacturing a revised component, and returning the machine to the test cycle.
For equipment buyers, the investment will be visible indirectly through reliability, maintenance intervals, machine behaviour, and the pace at which new functions reach the market. The test bench is not a product, but it strengthens the process used to determine whether a design is ready for sustained site work.
Field trials will continue after bench testing, particularly for conditions that cannot be reproduced inside the hall. The new facility gives those trials a more mature starting point and allows structural endurance and autonomous control to be developed within the same controlled programme.
