The German Federal Administrative Court, sitting in Leipzig, ruled on 14 June 2016 as the final court of appeal that the involvement of the federal state and the respondent, the state capital of Stuttgart, in the financing of the Stuttgart 21 rail project does not constitute “inadmissible co-financing of third-party public works”. The court thus declared inadmissible a citizens‘ initiative, via which the opponents of the project hoped to achieve a referendum on the state capital’s withdrawal from its contractually agreed financial obligations.
With the exception of the Klaus chain of tunnels and the Gleinalm Tunnel, Austria‘s Pyhrn Autobahn A9 toward the Slovakian border is fully completed. Work on the Klaus tunnels, specifically on the...
In late June 2016 Implenia signed the contract for construction of the “Lot GC01” section of the Line 11 extension to the east of Paris. Line 11 is run by the “Régie autonome des transports parisiens” (RATP), the state operator of public passenger transport in the capital of France. This infrastructure contract forms part of the major “Grand Paris Express” project. Implenia is taking on the job together with consortium partners NGE (France), Demathieu & Bard (France) and Pizzarotti (Italy). The “Grand Paris Express” project aims to improve links between the French capital and neighbouring residential areas in the Greater Paris region (Île-de-France) by building a transport network of six driverless underground railway lines by 2030.
The Institute and Laboratory of Geotechnics of the Technical University of Darmstadt held the 23rd Darmstadt Geotechnics Colloquium on 10 March 2016, organised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rolf Katzenbach. In...
The 5th Munich Tunnelling Symposium was organised on 3 June 2016 by the development association for structural engineering of the University of the Bundeswehr (UniBW) Munich together with the Research...
In the case of shield driving with a segmental support and annular gap mortar grouting, lifting forces act on the segment rings once they leave the shield tail. These forces can lead to pronounced misalignments of neighbouring rings, damage to the ring joint and diminished leak tightness. A two-component mortar can be applied to avoid this damage, which reaches the necessary stiffness to support the segments once the components have been mixed in the annular gap. This report deals with the targeted new development and optimization of the mortar. An explicit set of requirements is defined and it is explained how aggregate is used to arrive at an early, stiff bedding for the young segment rings while at the same time saving on accelerator.
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.
