The main breakthrough took place in the western bore of the Ceneri Base Tunnel on January 21, 2016. Shortly after this final round of blasting the tunnellers were able to exchange handshakes. The inner lining of the tunnel is due to follow in the months to come together with installation of the rail engineering work. The 15.4 km long Ceneri Base Tunnel is scheduled to become operational in late 2020.
Robin Lindahl (51) has been appointed as President and CEO of the Normet Group. He will be based in Hünenberg, Switzerland, and will start in his new role not later than May 1, 2016. Lindahl takes over the position from Tom Melbye, who has decided to step down from his operative role and will in future act as a Senior Advisor to the CEO and Chairman of Normet Group.
Towards this end, one of Germany’s largest noise abatement schemes is being accomplished in the west of Hamburg: to the north of the Elbe Tunnel, three noise abatement tunnels are being created in the districts of Schnelsen, Stellingen and Altona. In January 2016, Hochtief in conjunction with Franki Grundbau was commissioned to build the Stellingen Tunnel. The total value of the contract for the JV amounts to some 154 million euros.
Dr.-Ing. E.h. Martin Herrenknecht (73) builds the world’s biggest tunnelling machines. The tunnel boring machines produced by his Herrenknecht AG are first choice when spectacular projects are involved. They have been used for instance to drive 85 km of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the fourth tube of the Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg and just recently, the Eurasia Tunnel deep beneath the Bosporus in Istanbul. The Werner von Siemens Foundation has now honoured Martin Herrenknecht’s outstanding technical achievements with the most important German prize for technology, the Werner von Siemens Ring.
The Swiss private railway company BLS has awarded a contract for design services for the further improvement of the NEAT Lötschberg Base Tunnel to the consortium IG VALB (Ingenieurgemeinschaft Vollendung Ausbau Lötschberg-Basistunnel), who won the contract in competition with several Swiss and international competitors. The design works cover twinning the existing tunnel from Ferden to Mitholz and as an option full twinning from Ferden to Frutigen.
The Rastatt Tunnel represents the core engineering structure in planning approval section 1.2 of the new/upgraded Karlsruhe–Basle rail route. It will be tackled from May 2016 using two hydro-shield TBMs. The two single-track, roughly 4270 m long tunnel tubes will be lined with 50 cm thick reinforced concrete segments. The shallow location of the tunnel with minimal overburdens of less than 4 m, the subsidence-prone infrastructure and the presence of buildings, quite apart from having to undertunnel the Federbach low-lying conservation area protected by a frozen cover, place high demands on the engineering and process technology. Undertunnelling the busy Rhine Valley Railway, secured in advance by a ring-shaped brine freezing zone represents a particularly sophisticated task.
Compressed air work – initially used in caissons for bridge foundations or tunnels completely excavated under compressed air conditions – has also become standard in TBM tunnelling in the last decades. As air only decompression had caused several cases of decompression illness (DCI) in the past, work in compressed air and the decompression procedures had to be reassessed. As a result oxygen decompression was implemented into the decompression procedure.
At the end of October 2015 around 30 members of ITA COSUF (Committee on Operational Safety of Underground Facilities/Fig. 1) took the opportunity to...
STUVA’s International Forum for Tunnels and Infrastructure was held in the Dortmund Westfalenhallen from December 1 to 3, 2015. The outcome was highly impressive – the figures alone speak for themselves, establishing various new records for the STUVA Conference: more than 1800 conference participants and 165 exhibiting companies from the tunnel industry spread over around 6000 m² of display area. In addition to the subject area “Tunnelling”, “Tunnel Operation” was integrated in the STUVA Conference for the first time as a new segment with its own series of lectures.
