Climate protection and the geopolitical situation pose major challenges for our society. To protect the climate, we must reduce CO2 emissions and cut the consumption of fossil energies. The war in Ukraine makes us very aware of our economy‘s dependence on fossil energies and their availability and costs. This makes savings even more urgent than they already have been before. Likewise, the relevance of supply chains and availability of raw materials is becoming more and more obvious – also for the construction industry. An optimization of the design of conventional tunnels by owners and planners can lead to a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, energy and raw material requirements, and thus also in cost. In the article, potential optimizations are shown and explained with the help of examples.

Tradition and innovation, that does not have to be a contradiction, as the family-owned company Desoi from Hesse (Germany) shows. True to the spirit of Charles Darwi, that only those advance who move with the times and adapt as necessary, the specialist for injection technology has set itself the task of simplifying work on the construction site with modern means. With the Desoi w.i.l.m.a. recording and documentation device, the integration of mechanics and state-of-the-art electronics has enabled the leap into Industry 4.0.

The extension of the U5 urban railway line in Frankfurt a.M. will connect the Europaviertel to the city‘s underground network. The ARGE U5 Europaviertel, consisting of the Porr teams of civil...

Cross River Rail (CRR) is a new 10.2 km rail line including 5.9 km of twin tunnels running under the Brisbane River and the Central Business District (CBD) of Brisbane, Australia. The new line will unlock a bottleneck at the core of the rail network and will transform travelling across the whole of South East Queensland. CRR’s Tunnels, Stations and Development (TSD) package scope includes design and construction of the twin tunnels from Boggo Road Station in the south to the Northern Portal and delivery of four underground stations.

For the construction of inner tunnel linings exposed to water pressure, both constructions made of waterimpermeable concrete and waterproofing with plastic sealing membranes are used. Both sealing options have in common that hose lines are led through the inner tunnel shell along a tunnel block. The article published in tunnel 3/22 examines the question of the extent to which water can flow along the longitudinal direction of the hose lines as a construction-related effect.

For the supply of all special formwork (such as formwork for the widening, connecting structures, cross-passages and the access of the Prague intermediate access), the JV Tunnel Feuerbach (Baresel Tunnelbau GmbH, Kunz Untertagebau GmbH and Bertschinger Bau GmbH under the project management of Johann Bachsleitner) selected the specialist Huber & Sohn, Germany. The systems, manufactured in carpentry-style timber construction, were delivered in ready-to-use modular units. Alkus GM6 formwork panels were used as formwork facing. A technical article on this project will be published in tunnel 4/2022.

On July 8, 2022, the next Munich Tunnelling Symposium will take place at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich in Neubiberg. The organizers are the university‘s sponsoring association “Förderverein Konstruktiver Ingenieurbau” and STUVA. The lectures will be held in German.