Rectangular TBM for Urban Pedestrian Subway Construction

Synopsis:

Construction of underground facilities in urban area is always a challenge for city development due to congested utilities, existing traffic concerns and proximity to structural foundations. The situation would be exacerbated by the complicated underground geological conditions if encountered. Therefore, trenchless excavation for tunnel / subway construction is commonly used in Hong Kong, where the cut and cover construction method was found not feasible. Traditionally, the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) will be adopted which requires manual handling of heavy temporary support system in the confined underground environment and inevitably the tunnel workers will be exposed to various kinds of safety risk, such as face instability, falling objects and groundwater ingress into excavation area, etc.

In recent years, Civil Engineering and Development Department (CEDD) initiated an innovative trenchless tunnelling construction method using the Rectangular TBM by Shanghai Tunnel (HK) Co. Ltd., to construct the pedestrian subway in sensitive urban…