More than 2300 tunnellers from 54 countries gathered from April 22 to 27, 2016 in San Francisco, USA. The occasion was the 42nd Annual Meeting of the ITA (International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association) in conjunction with the 2016 World Tunnel Congress (WTC). The Tunnel Congress was organized by the UCA of SME (Underground Construction Association, Division of Society for Mining. Metallurgy and Exploration Inc.) in conjunction with the ITA. It was captioned “Uniting our Industry”.
Lifting forces act on the segment rings once they vacate the shield tail during shield drives involving segmental lining and annual gap mortar grouting. These can lead to pronounced misalignments of neighbouring rings and damage to the annular joint as well as leakages. Stiff bedding for the young segmental rings can be assured at an early stage thus reducing flotation thanks to optimization of the targeted new development based on an explicit profile of requirements.
Some 700 km of metro, urban railway and light rail tunnels, 680 km of main line as well as 320 km of road tunnels: transport tunnels with a total length of some 1700 km have been built in the Federal Republic of Germany according to current figures provided by the STUVA, the Research Association for Tunnels and Transportation Facilities Inc. And there is a growing need – not just seen nationally. According to a study by the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) every year some 4500–4700 km of new tunnels are added to the existing ones. These figures on the one hand demonstrate the dynamism of the tunnel construction market. However, given an estimated life cycle of over 100 years, tunnel maintenance and repair issues become increasingly relevant.
Swiss construction company Implenia was successful on the bid of a large-scale infrastructure project around 100 km southwest of Oslo, for which the contract worth 105 million euros (979 million Norwegian kroner) was signed on April 7, 2016. Near the town of Kongsberg, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration has commissioned new sections of the E134, a key road link between Oslo and the west coast.
The Follo Line project is currently the largest transport project in Norway. It consists of a 22 km new double track railway line between Oslo Central Station and the new station at Ski, south of Oslo. It will form the core part of Inter City development south of Oslo and is commissioned by the Norwegian National Railway Administration (Jernbaneverket). In early April 2016 the acceptance of a recently completed Double Shield Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) with a 9.9 m diameter for the Follo Line took place at the Herrenknecht plant in Schwanau, Germany. While two more high-speed tunnel borers are still in assembly, a fourth machine was being disassembled again for transportation.
The 7.8 km long second tube of the Ulriken Tunnel represents a milestone in Norwegian tunnelling; for the first time a tunnel boring machine (TBM) is used to drive a railway tunnel. With a diameter of 9.3 m, the selected gripper TBM also has the largest diameter ever bored in Norway. After a general description of the project, the paper describes selected aspects of the TBM project.
The Gotthard Base Tunnel opens on June 1, 2016. Generally nobody is allowed to stay in the tunnel anymore. In order to prevent accidents when necessary maintenance work is performed and sections are blocked for the trains, the doors in the cross passages are monitored by the control system. If a door opens, train operation is stopped immediately. Each subsection from the sliding doors in the cross passages, to the emergency stops and the 50 Hz power supply is controlled by an independent control system. So-called head computers read the data from the local programmable logic controllers (PLC) and prepare it for the control systems, which are integrated in the tunnel and railway control technology. The information of the head computers is transferred to the higher-level tunnel control system.
For several weeks now a tram stop shelter has graced the STUVA halls in Cologne. It serves to direct theoretical findings gained within the scope of the research project “InREAKT – Integrated...
Under the aegis and participation of Dr.-Ing. Friedrich Krüger the Technical Academy in Esslingen is staging a seminar on “Protection against Vibration and secondary Noise Immissions in Rail Traffic” on June 15 and 16, 2016.
by Günter Girnau
Prof. Ernst-Ulrich Hiersche, honorary member of STUVA, died in Karlsruhe aged 84 at the end of 2015. For all of twenty years, from 1977 to 1997, he more than pulled his weight alongside me as an extremely active member of the STUVA board. His creative spirit spurred on our joint endeavours and his omni-present humour also helped ease the occasional entanglements that life presents. We shall all miss him greatly.
