FD3/14 p39-42 29/3/04 7:27 am Page 39

GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

Sealing by Pregrouting at
Trollhattan
Making Safe and Dry
The Oslo-Gothenburg high speed rail-
way is currently under construction
in sections for client Banverket, the
Swedish national railway authority,
with a view to completion by 2015.
When fully commissioned, the new
railway will reduce the journey time
between Oslo and Gothenburg from
the current 4 h to just 2.5 h.
Meantime, individual sections are
being opened as and when they
are completed. The 7 km-long
Trollhattan to Vanersborg section
skirts the southern end of Lake
Vanern, the largest lake in Sweden. A
long loop in the existing single track
is being bypassed by a new twin-
track railway, which includes the
3.5 km-long Trollhattan tunnel. The
tunnel has to be dry, so is being pre- Long Shifts Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer XL3 C at
the face in Trollhattan centre section.
grouted at the face using cement in
18 m-long holes drilled accurately The site operates from 07.00 to 22.00,
around its periphery by a fully- during which time a single blasting cycle is
computerized Atlas Copco Rocket achieved at each working face. Two crews
Boomer XL3 C drillrig.
work alternate weeks, changing over
halfway through the Wednesday shift. The
New Section first crew works a 7.2 h shift on Wednesday,
and 14.4 h shifts on Thursday and Friday.
The new twin-track section connects The weekend is free, and the crew resumes
into the existing single line at both ends, with 14.4 h shifts on Monday and Tuesday,
but follows a straighter alignment, reduc- and a 7.2 h shift on Wednesday. Once
ing the distance travelled. It is currently relieved by the second crew, the first crew Loading a rod into the RAS from the
under construction by contractor NCC takes the following week off. Rocket Boomer XL3 C basket.
International.
The 108 sq m single-tube, twin-track
running tunnel is being excavated by
drill/blast on a north-south alignment in
granite gneiss, which is hard at the north
end and softens progressively towards the
south. Some faulting occurs along the
tunnel alignment, but generally the rock is
sparsely to moderately jointed.
A 2.2 km-long, 27 sq m rescue tunnel
will parallel the main tunnel over much of
its length, and this is being excavated
simultaneously by the same contractor.
The safety regulations require that no one
shall be more than 300 m from an exit into
the rescue tunnel, or into open air, when a
train has to be evacuated in the main
tunnel.

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GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN
TO VANERSBORG AND OSLO
Plan of the Trollhattan tunnel. This regime originated at the recently
completed Sodra Lanken project in
Stockholm, to enable the crews to spend as
much time as possible at home, without
impacting upon progress. The crews, who
invariably live a long distance from site,
are happy with this compromise, but the
same cannot be said of the authorities, who
monitor it very closely for obvious rea-
sons. However, it must be said that work-
ing conditions at Swedish tunnelling
projects are amongst the best in the world,
and job rotation during each shift keeps
tiredness at bay and helps avoid boredom.
There is also a major case to be made for
keeping crews together, especially in an
environment in which sophisticated mech-
anization is the norm.
40
Grouting
Before the running tunnel face can be
advanced, a circular pattern of 30 off
18 m-long holes must be drilled around the
full perimeter using the face drillrig. These
are pregrouted with cement to form a
watertight envelope ahead of the face,
within which three 5 m rounds can be
drilled and blasted.
The drilling and grouting exercise takes
a full working day to complete in the run-
ning tunnels. On the following day, six
control holes are drilled to test the effec-
tiveness of the grouting, and these are
pumped up to 4-5 bar using water. Water
loss is then measured, and, if less than
0.2 lit/min/m/bar is lost for each 18 m
hole, the umbrella is certified as ready for
advance. If one hole fails, it is grouted and
another two holes are drilled and grouted,
and the tunnel carries on regardless.
Each grouted umbrella overlaps the pre-
vious one by 5 m as an extra insurance
against water seepage. Experience has
proved that it is better to pregrout rather
than postgrout, and there are a number of
notable and costly postgrouting failures on
the record.
At Trollhattan, there is an imposed water
ingress limit of 3.5-2.5 lit/min/100 m of
tunnel, required to satisfy the demands of
Banverket for its electric railway system.
Only one water pressure test can be
conducted on any particular hole. To
date, only 50% of grouted rings have
passed the water pressure test first time, so
some face advance is usually lost on a
second day while remedial measures are
undertaken.
Drilling and Blasting
All blasting is carried out using site sensi-
tized emulsion, with dynamite primers and
Nonel detonators. A Dyno 2 t-capacity
mixer truck is used for the north faces,
operated by NCC under Dyno supervision.
The advantage with SSE is that the compo-
nents are not themselves classified as
explosives, and, as such, can be stored and
transported under the less-onerous flam-
mable materials rules. At the south face, a
mini SSE truck carrying a 1 t-capacity con-
tainer docks with the drillrig, which is then
used as a charging platform.
The standard blasting pattern in the
running tunnel comprises 170 holes drilled
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GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN

to 5.2 m depth using Secoroc Magnum

Section: 400/723
SR35 drilling equipment. 48 mm ballistic
button bits are used with 5.5 m-long round
Magnum SR35 drifter rods. A smooth
blasting technique is applied, using two
rows with reduced charges. At the periph-
ery, 80 gram pentyl cord is used, and in the
second row located 0.6 m inside the
periphery, 0.9 kg of emulsion is measured
into each hole.
+73 m +73 m
The breaking face is formed by four
102 mm holes drilled using Magnum SR35
Dome reaming bits. Drilling and blasting
takes around 3 h, mucking around 7 h, and
scaling 3 h. Very little rock reinforcement
is necessary, with just the occasional rock-
bolt being installed.
Under normal circumstances, one com-
plete cycle of drilling and blasting is
undertaken at each face on three or four
days of the week. Overbreak is measured South Section Typical overbreak recorded in the main
every metre on advance. There is a 50 cm tunnel.
free zone around the perimeter of the Work from the south portal has progressed
drive, and average overbreak is 4% outside past the 600 m point, leaving less than 400 m
the theoretical tunnel line. to go to breakthrough into the completed
The Secoroc bits are reground every 10 valley section. The first 20 m was pregrouted
holes, and have a life of 500-700 m. There with micro cement injected into 18 m-long
are two purpose-built workshop containers holes using a Craelius Unigrout system.
at site housing regrinding facilities, which The tunnel is carried forward on full
include Grind Matic BQ2 semi-automatic face excavation using a refurbished and
button bit grinders. A third container is upgraded Atlas Copco Robot Boomer
used for Boomer maintenance. 185 ES drillrig, which previously saw ser-
vice at another Banverket site at Hallandsas.
False Tunnel The average depth of cover is 20 m, and
the alignment is mainly under forested
Some 1.2 km from the south portal, the ground, except where it passes beneath a
crown of the running tunnel alignment is corner of Bjorndalen, a small housing area
revealed in the base of a valley known as situated some 400 m from the south portal.
Bjornsravinen. Early in the project, NCC At the half dozen houses most affected,
obtained access at this point, diverted the vibration sensors were installed, and these
stream into a pipeline, and excavated the were linked to the Internet, from where Entrance to the rescue tunnel and
base of the valley to tunnel invert level. they could be monitored daily. The blasting centre section faces.
They then established temporary portals,
and drove the running tunnel at full section
for 250 m in each direction.
NCC Sweden, a regional company in
the same contracting group will construct a
short false tunnel across the valley to con-
nect the two temporary portals, and the
area will then be backfilled and the stream
reinstated.
Early excavation of this section
removed a bottleneck on the critical path
of the project, and opened the way to con-
structing the reinforced concrete false
tunnel during the Spring and Summer
months, rather than under the much harsher
winter conditions.

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GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN
Side view of Rocket Boomer XL3 C. sequence was adjusted to lower vibration,
as necessary.
North Section
The tunnel dips at 1% from the north
portal for 2.3 km to the valley position,
and then flattens out to 0.3% for the
remaining 1.2 km to the south portal.
The drive from the north portal, which
is being undertaken using an Atlas Copco
Rocket Boomer 353 ES drillrig, passes
within 100 m of a local hospital.
Fortunately, the areas of the hospital that
would be sensitive to blasting are 250 m
away, and are generally unaffected.
Nevertheless, blasting times are negotiated
with the hospital authorities, if need be.
Rescue Tunnel
At a point some 1.2 km from the north portal
a 370 m adit has been driven oversize down
to the main tunnel horizon, from which faces
are being driven in both directions in both
the running tunnel and the rescue tunnel. A
pair of Swedvent 1.2 m-diameter silenced
axial flow fans mounted high above the adit
entrance provides auxiliary ventilation for
the faces. The adit is paved with asphalt to
provide a safe, year-round surface for
mobile equipment and trucks.
An Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer XL3 C
is drilling the running tunnel faces, while a
rebuilt Boomer H175 is working in the
5 m-wide x 5.5 m-high rescue tunnels.
Rock produced from the tunnel is the
property of Banverket, and is used for bal-
lasting tracks or sold into the aggregate
market. NCC conducts some crushing at
site on behalf of Banverket.
The completed tunnel will be lined with
50 mm depth of steel fibre reinforced
42
shotcrete over its entire length before han-
dover in December, 2005.
NCC employs 35 people at Trollhattan to
cover the three sites in operation. In the
centre section, mucking is subcontracted. In
the north and south sections, NCC uses
Broyt X43 diesel-powered hydraulic loaders
which are not self-propelled, loading into
subcontractors 30 t-capacity semi trailers.
Rocket Boomer XL3 C
The new Rocket Boomer XL3 C working in
the centre section of the tunnel is a fully-
computerized face drilling jumbo, with auto-
matic boom control (ABC), and handles all
face and grouthole drilling. It has been well-
received by the operators, who found that it
took just two days to convert fully from their
previous Atlas Copco 353 ES.
This machine is equipped with a rod
adding system (RAS) on the two outer
booms, which are reloaded alternately by a
single operator using the rig basket. The
short movement of the rod adding system
speeds up the grouthole drilling process.
The rig computer tells the operator how
many rods are in each hole, and indicates
when the hole is complete.
The operators report that the rig
achieves 2.6-3 m/min/rockdrill, even with
all three machines in use.
In general, the Rocket Boomer XL3 C is
a three-boom and basket hydraulic tun-
nelling rig with high reaching Eagle console
for railway tunnels and underground cav-
erns, suitable for cross sections up to
179 sq m. It is equipped with COP 1838
rock drills with double reflex dampening for
high speed drilling and excellent drill steel
economy. An integrated diagnostic system
can immediately identify faulty electronic
components. The ABC system assists the
operator to achieve accurate drill hole loca-
tion and improve the quality of drilling by
optimizing the drilling pattern and reducing
overbreak. A full specification of this drill-
rig is available at facedrilling.com ■
Acknowledgements
Atlas Copco is grateful to NCC
International AB for facilitating the site
visit on which this article is based, and
particularly thanks Goran Manell, NCC
project manager at Trollhattan, for taking
the trouble to explain details of this
complex project.
FACE DRILLING