ABSTRACT
Delay in underground infrastructure causes great costs. Construction managers know how hard it is to manage one particular aspect: the design time. In practice design teams usually fail to deliver on time. On the contrary scientific presentations have promised to slash design time using buzzwords like parametric design and artificial intelligence. The reason for the failure is simple: behind the scenes, tunnel design is still not automated to handle the complete range of day-to-day nitty-gritty design work: until now nobody has been able to automate the complete chain of tedious tasks for all conditions. For example, manual labour is used for adjusting to local design codes, taking into account construction phasing, tricky thermal and shrinkage effects and reinforcement detailing specials.
This paper cuts out the ‘air’ around artificial intelligence and offers classic design automation - but - for the first time offers the complete preliminary-to-final design package. Three ‘24-hour tunnel designs’ made under different design codes (Netherlands and Sweden) and for different traffic conditions (Road and rail tunnels) will be presented: A9 Highway Tunnel (Amstelveen), West Link Rail tunnel (Gothenburg) and Rail Tunnel (Den Bosch). Then it will demonstrate how to design two new 1 km tunnel segments within 24 hours.
Unique is that two new tunnels will be designed LIVE during the event using just the intended alignment and a few basic inputs. In the paper we will explain the best practices regarding organisational structure, technologies and workflow to achieve this.
