The Center for Underground at Colorado School of Mines (Mines) had been awarded a major contract by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design and demonstrate rapid tunneling technology.
“This project should dramatically improve tunneling efficiency,” said Mike Mooney, Grewcock Distinguished Chair of Underground Construction and Tunneling and the project’s Director and Lead Investigator.
“Our proposed advances aim to drive down the cost of tunneling and dramatically increase the speed of tunneling over current practice. The project is highly interdisciplinary, blending the civil tunneling and horizontal directional drilling expertise at Mines with petroleum drilling engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and geophysics expertise. This project brings together all the right expertise to advance rapid tunnel construction,” says Alfred Eustes, Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering.
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“Our approach blends horizontal directional drilling’s operational framework and oil and gas directional drilling’s proven metric-exceeding speed and distance performance with additional advances in excavation mechanics, tunnel installation, ground imaging and artificial intelligence,” Mooney said. “This unique project provides an opportunity for step change advances in tunneling technology that can improve tunnel construction for water, wastewater, transportation, and utilities.”
The R&D effort is structured as a university-industry innovation incubator at Mines. The Center for Underground brought in full-time engineering professionals with expertise in sensing, artificial intelligence, mechanical systems, smart fluids, and instrumentation to work closely with Mines faculty experts.
“We are organized as a university-industry melting pot of different disciplines, skill sets, and perspectives, with innovative ideas flying all over the place,” says Joe Samaniuk, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. Mines will also bring in partners in field testing.
The research team plans a field site demonstration targeting sustained high tunneling advance rates fifteen months from now.
The project will be described during the Tunneling Fundamentals, Applications and Innovations industry short course held at Colorado School of Mines October 19-22, 2020.
DARPA needs to look at the method used to construct the AKIMA Shinkansen Tunnel for JAPAN RAIL Ltd. using the Pneumatic Capsule Pipeline Method of Mining Mass Transportation to remove tunnel spoil for a seven mile distance and also deliver the ready mix concrete used to line the tunnel in order to see how fast a railway tunnel can be mined out lined with concrete and then placed into service quickly.
It will be great to see what evolves from this project to improve tunneling efficiencies! I wish Mike Mooney and his team much success. My 37 years in this industry has been great having constructed tunnels in multiple continents and all across the USA, Canada, and Mexico. We have seen many changes and improvements in all the tunneling excavation methods, from drill blast to mechanical excavation in both hard rock and soft ground. Safety being first and foremost objective at all times. Please contact me should you have any questions or I can be of assistance.
Sincerely
Rick Gomez
GOMEZ INTERNATIONAL INC.