ABSTRACT
Mucking out automatic systems have been nowadays widely exploited in practically all mechanized tunnelling projects. This mostly occurs due to the improvement of the related technologies that solve complex logistic-related problems, but also to the environment, safety, energetic aspects, CO2 emission, manpower optimization. Also Owners have already been specifying such systems in their tender documents as Brenner alpine tunnel, Turin-Lyon, Gothard, Loetschbeg. The paper describes a particular case in a urban contest which is the Catania Metro. Therefore, starting from little capacity and short tunnels we will arrive to huge diameter TBMs, such as the 16m diameter in A1 highway, up to BTC-Brenner Mules, where about 80 km of very complicate systems are able to handle various excavation front faces.
