A tunnel boring machine (TBM) named “Greater Bay Area” has been put into use in Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong on August 25 for building the Pearl River estuary section of Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway. The project is to be China’s deepest underwater tunnel and will accelerate the construction of the Greater Bay Area 30-minute life circle.
Located between Guangzhou and Dongguan, the underwater tunnel that spans 13.69km will have a speed limit of 250km/h has been designed to overcome the challenging geological conditions of the nearby the Pearl River estuary. With the maximum depth of 115m and maximum water pressure of 1.06 mPa, every square centimetre of the tunnel is loaded with 10.6kg (over 10 atm), making this tunnel top the world in this term.
The super-sized TBM has a diameter of 13.32m with a total length of 133m and weight of around 3900 tons. New technologies such as 12-bar bearing seals and 4-circuit pressure maintaining are applied to the machine’s construction. As planned, it will start excavation underwater in Nansha, Guangzhou in November this year and dock with the other TBM that starts from Humen, Dongguan.
Started on July 2, 2020, the 116-kilometer Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway that stretches through Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, and Jiangmen will serve as an important route of China’s eight vertical and eight horizontal high-Speed railway projects and support the development of the GBA.
