ABSTRACT
Conventional mechanized tunnelling is separated into two consecutive process steps, the advance and ring building. In the past it was not possible to run both processes in parallel. During ring building the machine is stopped, so ring building is associated with a loss of time for the advance. To increase the efficiency of the tunnel excavation process, the machine is equipped with a system for continuous mining. The two process steps can be carried out at the same time, which improves overall performance and reduces project runtime and thereby the cost of the project. The continuous advance increases the total daily advance rate by a factor of up to 1.6 compared to the discontinuous state-of-the-art advance, resulting in a significant reduction in construction time especially for longer tunnels. In addition, higher system performance and utilization increases energy and resource efficiency, so the environmental impact is significantly reduced.
