The first super large diameter TBM driven tunnel on China’s Pearl River Basin – Guangzhou Haizhu Bay Tunnel project successfully achieved breakthrough on July 15th. The 15.07m diameter slurry TBM, named “Pioneer” was developed by the China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Corporation Limited(CRCHI) and used to bore the eastern line tunnel.
Ahead of this, on July 6th, the first cross passage on the project achieved a high-precision breakthrough. This is the first engineering application of a TBM to construct a cross passage on a super-large diameter tunnel by a TBM made by China. This TBM, also produced by CRCHI, has an excavation diameter of 3.86m.
“Pioneer”, the large diameter Slurry TBM, was assembled from February 20th, 2023, with assembly to launch completed in less than three months. The launch date was two months later than the TBM being used to bore the western line, but took just 12 months to complete work of the eastern line – one month faster than the western line TBM. During tunnelling, the maximum daily advance rate of the “Pioneer” TBM was 16m and the maximum monthly advance rate was 324m.
The Haizhu Bay Tunnel project has a total route length of 4.35km, including the 2,102m long TBM section that passes through the fracture zone of the Pearl River Channel twice, and through long-distance mudstone formations, muddy siltstone formations, whilst also undercrossing a number of buildings and piles.
The lengths of the six cross passages range from 14.8m to 18.1m. The tunnel segments are C60 high-strength segments, with the cross passages buried more than 45m deep. The 3.86m diameter cross passage TBM has been carrying out synchronous construction with the main tunnel TBM and features several key core technologies such as the ability to rapidly break into oblique intersection lining segments, high-pressure sealing, rapid positioning adjustment, and high-precision guidance correction. It achieved the highest daily progress of two ring segments in less than 3 hours, and created a new record for cutting into the main line tunnel segments.
The total investment of the Haizhu Bay Tunnel project is about 11.68bn yuan and when open, will shorten driving times from downtown to Guangzhou South Railway Station to 15 minutes. It is scheduled to open to traffic in 2025.
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