The first of seven TERRATEC TBMs being used on Mumbai Metro’s highly anticipated 33.5km underground Line 3 corridor, in India, breaks through on its inaugural drive. In mid-February, TERRATEC joined workers from the J. Kumar – China Railway No. 3 Engineering Group (CRTG) JV to celebrate the breakthrough of a 6.68m diameter TERRATEC dual-mode hard rock Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) at work on Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd’s (MMRCL) Line 3 project, in India. The machine is one of three new TERRATEC dual-mode TBMs being used by J. Kumar-CRTG to excavate portions of the line’s 4.94km-long twin-tube tunnel contract UGC-05 and 4.45km-long twin-tube tunnel contract UGC-06 (stretching from Dharavi Station to the CSIA International Airport).
“We congratulate TERRATEC on the performance of the Dual Mode TBM T62 and the completion of its first 690m drive of from the [CSIA] International Airport Station to Sahar Road Station,” said Haluk Emre, J. Kumar-CRTG’s Project Manager on Package 6. “The machine has travelled successfully through mixed geology and considerable water ingress and we credit TERRATEC’s TBM field service support experts for assisting our tunnelling operations with close monitoring throughout this period.”
The versatile TERRATEC single shield TBMs are equipped to operate in either Open or Closed mode in the predominantly fresh and slightly to moderately weathered Basalt and Breccia expected on these contracts. The robust hard rock cutterheads are mounted with heavy-duty 17” disc cutters, which are interchangeable with ripper tools, and feature large bucket openings that provide a 10% opening ratio.
Other state-of-the-art features include 2,000kW Electric Variable Frequency Drives – that allow the cutterheads to cut efficiently in harder rock zones at maximum speeds of 7rpm and deliver an exceptional torque of 8,500kNm to cope with more fractured zones of ground along the alignment – as well as active shield articulation and built-in two component backfilling grout systems.
In addition to the three new hard rock TBMs, TERRATEC has also supplied two re-manufactured 6.61m diameter mixed/rock Earth Pressure Balance Machines (S63 and S64) to J. KumarCRTG in Mumbai, which have been put to work on a section of highly weathered ground on contract UGC-05. “The TBMs are performing very well,” says TERRATEC Site Operations Manager, Bill Brundan. “The five J. Kumar-CRTG machines have excavated a total of more than 5.7km of tunnel to date.”
A further two new 6.68m diameter dual-mode hard rock TBMs are being used by the Hindustan Construction/Moscow Metrostroy JV to build the twin tunnels on the line’s 4.049km-long contract UGC-02. Both machines were deployed from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST) TBM launch shaft and are currently mining towards the Mumbai Central Station TBM receiving shaft, having now completed 3.7km of tunnel with progress rates of up to 525m per month.
In total, the seven TERRATEC machines have mined 9,462m (42%) of their planned drives to date. When complete, Mumbai Metro’s much-anticipated Line 3 will be the first underground metro line in the city. The 33.5km-long line will connect Cuffe Parade business district in the far south to the Santacruz Electronics Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) in the northcentral with 26 underground and one at-grade station (see map).
Construction of the line is divided into seven tunnel-and-station packages that were awarded to five contracting joint ventures in 2016. These five contractors will deploy a total of seventeen (17) TBMs with TERRATEC being the lead TBM supplier on the project with a 41% market share. A video of the TERRATEC dual-mode TBM breaking through on UGC-06 in Mumbai can be found here: https://youtu.be/Cfxbv1guZoY
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