ABSTRACT
Directional steering of tunnel boring machines is a process of minimizing horizontal and vertical deviations with respect to a designed tunnel alignment. Until today, shield machine operators perform steering manually for example by adjusting thrust cylinder pressures. At the same time, they need to monitor the entire tunnelling process and interact with the tunnelling team. How well this is executed depends to a large extent on the professional experience of the operators. Construction companies are having increasing difficulties finding qualified personnel for tunnelling. One reason for this are the high complexity of tunnel boring machines and their operation. In addition, the training of operators is time-consuming and usually takes place during tunnelling. To enable operators to cope with tunnel boring machines efficiently and safely, the steering system is being developed further step by step towards a fully automatized system. An important milestone is the development of semi-automatic control of active steering actuators. In this article, an innovative thrust cylinder control system and the respective intuitive human-machine interface are presented.
