BASF's Underground Construction Group, UGC International, is a world leader in the provision of reliable, customer oriented product solutions to the tunneling and mining industry. We are part of BASF, an established multinational company with the support framework you would expect from a leading world wide chemical product supplier. UGC clearly recognizes your success is founded on delivering solutions that meet, if not exceed your customer's valuable needs. By integrating with you from project start-up, your success is ensured.
As many underground projects attract international contractor and design teams, we believe our global presence permits sustain able benefits to your organization through seamless technology and service transfer anywhere in the world.
BASF UGC offers free technical and site application support for all its products and equipment. The service aspect is part of the BASF UGC culture, and is recognized as the best in the industry. Product specialists in each region are able to advise on the latest industry technology, as well as product features and application. BASF UGC service is the sum of the collective knowledge of all these engineers in every part of the world, forming a database that is always open for your use.
Sprayed Concrete
The demand for high quality, durable sprayed concrete, produced with lower health risks and less negative influences on the environment is ever increasing. It is evident world wide that there has been a dramatic conversion from dry to wet mix applications in underground construction, both in the tunneling and mining sectors. Furthermore, the tunneling industry has recognized the value of permanent sprayed concrete tunnel linings, and single shell structures are becoming state-of-the-art, delivering substantial cost reduction and program saving over conventional tunnel designs.
Equipment
MEYCO® Equipment in Winterthur, Switzerland, with extensive production, research and development resources, is certified to the highest contemporary industry standards. This is, of course, reflected in the products and service. Customer Service is available around the globe, around the clock, be it for training, trouble shooting or just for advice. MEYCO® Equipment products include:
Dry or wet spraying machines, including MEYCO® Suprema:
- State-of-the-art spraying manipulator booms, incorporating laser guided automated application, such as with the MEYCO® Robojet Logica, that may be mounted on various chassis
- Fully equipped and modular spraying mobiles for mechanized or automatic spraying for both the tunneling and mining industry
- Tailor-made equipment for TBM's or special projects according to customer's requirements and the prevailing working conditions
- Accelerator dosing pumps and sprayed concrete testing units
Injection
Unexpected water ingress during underground construction usually escalates project costs, and inevitably causes significant delays. To counteract these risks, an economical approach is to perform pre-injection of the ground ahead of the advancing face with microcements. Of course, there are instances where post-injection is required, stabilization of soils and even structural repairs using high performance chemical injection products. UGC has the complete menu of products and technical support to suit your encountered problem.
TBM Solution
UGC have taken a fresh perspective into the needs of our TBM tunnelling customers. We believe our total solution approach brings a new dimension to this challenging sector, allowing TBM drives to become more successful, even through highly challenging ground conditions. UGC has the largest range of products and services available to cater for the needs and problems in TBM tunnelling, whether it is by soft ground, or open hard rock methods. Our products are successful in use for TBM projects with up to 15 - 30 m diameter and up to 4 bar water pressure.
Waterproofing
Technology development in this area of underground construction has remained quite static until recently. Conventional sheet membranes are the norm, but are often susceptible to leakages that are notoriously difficult to rectify. Furthermore, they are unsuitable for complex tunnel shapes.
In response to industry demand, UGC has developed a new spray applied waterproofing membrane that can simply be applied in a sandwich construction between sprayed or cast concrete shells. As there is sufficient bond strength, the spray applied membrane facilitates the construction of single shell linings, but also mitigates the risk of water ingress by eliminating potential water paths. The secret to waterproofing lies in the excellent bonding properties between the membrane and concrete.
Fire Protection
With the recent, highly publicised tunnel fires and consequent damage suffered to their structural linings, the need for fire protection of underground structures has clearly been identified by national authorities. The fire protection of tunnels is currently viewed as a means to significantly reduce repair time and costs, open the effectively prevent explosive concrete spalling, no reduction in structural concrete strength, or loss in reinforcement tensile strength during a tunnel fire, a thermal barrier is the only solution. UGC's unique solution is known as MEYCO FIX Fireshield 1350 which is a cementitious sprayed thermal barrier with unique properties that can be sprayed with robotic systems providing high production rates, even finish and of controlled thickness. The thermal barrier system is relatively thin an ideal for both new build tunnels, and existing unprotected tunnel linings where, typically, the space envelope is always limited.
