Following successful factory testing on December 6th, TERRATEC has announced the delivery of a new 5.74m diameter Hard Rock Double Shield TBM to the the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy Hydropower Project in Laos.
The Project, which is located in the Southern part of the Country on the Bolaven Plateau, around 80km East of Pakse and 35km North-West of Attapeu, comprises two central cored rock fill dams, waterway tunnels with a vertical shaft and a power house with a generating capacity of 410MW. The Main Contractor for the above work is SK Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. of Korea.
SK has subcontracted the TBM tunnelling works to Seli Overseas S.p.A. of Italy. The tunnelling works comprise the construction of the Low Pressure Head Race Tunnel. SELI Overseas in turn awarded TERRATEC the contract to design and manufacture the TBM which will be used to complete the 11.5km tunnel.
The TBM will bore through mudstone, siltstone and sandstone and for that propose, the CutterHead was designed with a very robust yet versatile system, mounting Heavy Duty 17’’ disc cutters and keeping four large bucket openings. The 2,000kW Electric VFD Main Drive will allow the CutterHead to cut through the hardest rock zones at the maximum speed of 7rpm whilst delivering an exceptional torque of 8,000kNm to cope with fracture zones along of the alignment.
Other state-of-the-art features on the TBM include, among others, High-Speed re-gripping system, Single-Shield advancing mode, and High-Pressure Emergency Thrust. The key parts of the TBM were produced in Australia and Japan and assembled at the TERRATEC facilities in China.
Representatives of SELI Overseas, SK E&C and Laos Government attended the Factory Acceptance Test. The machine is now to be dismantled and shipped to Thailand Port from where it will be transported by road to the Project Site. TBM assembly on site is expected to commence in early 2015.
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