Tunneling

Bye-Bye to Bertha, the world’s largest tunneling machine

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wsdot This time-lapse video captures the difficult and challenging work to disassemble the world’s largest-diameter tunneling machine. For four months, crews cut, hoisted and trucked away 8,000 tons of the machine’s equipment and steel, removing it from inside the tunnel it had built. Up next – finishing the double-deck highway inside and installing all the operating systems to open Seattle’s new SR 99 tunnel by early 2019.

The world’s first Variable Density Tunnel Boring Machine

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MRTMalaysia Two types of TBMs are being used to excavate the tunnel for the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang Line. In the portion of the alignment going through the Kenny Hill Formation, Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) TBMs will be used while the world’s first Variable Density TBMs, which was specially developed jointly by world renowned TBM manufacturer Herrenknecht AG of Germany and MMC Gamuda joint venture, will be used to excavate in the Kuala Lumpur Limestone Formation … Read more

View from a drone inside a tunnel executed by Bertha

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wsdot View from a drone inside the SR 99 tunnel, executed by Bertha. Bertha, also known as Big Bertha, is a 57-foot-diameter (17.4 m) tunnel boring machine built specifically for the Washington State Department of Transportation’s (WSDOT) Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel project in Seattle.[1] It was made by Hitachi Zosen Sakai Works in Osaka, Japan, and the machine’s assembly was completed in Seattle in June 2013. Tunnel boring began on July 30, 2013, with … Read more

Pipe jacking with hydroshield – Azerbaijan project

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In this type of drilling, the pipe is used as a final element of the tunnel and at the same time during the advance must be able to transmit the pushing force to the TBM (Hydroshield, EPB or open shield). The advance is made through the push made by a set of main jacking cylinders intalled in the starting shaft on the jacking pipe. This pipe has been manufactured in accordance with strict rules, in … Read more

Pipe jacking with open shield

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The election of this type of perforation is influenced in great way of the type of ground and surface area of influence. Is absolutely necessary not to have groundwater levels and the ground has to be cohesive. This boring technic is inadvisable in free ground without cohesion, hard ground or in water presence. The execution of pipe jacking with open shield, is realized by a SHIELD that has incorporated a perforation tool, depending on the … Read more

How a Tunnel-Boring Machine Drills Underground

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“Video courtesy of CDM/HMM Joint Venture – For engineering enthusiasts and anyone who’s interested in the mechanics of siphon construction, this animation shows exactly how the 110-ton, 300-foot-long tunnel boring machine will drill a distance of nearly two miles, 100 feet beneath the New York Harbor seabed…”.