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Interesting article. This bit was not what I was expecting: Today, rock tunneling machines have achieved tunneling rates of over 700 meters per week, and soil
by kitd 2y ago
Interesting article. This bit was not what I was expecting:
Today, rock tunneling machines have achieved tunneling rates of over 700 meters per week, and soil tunneling machines have achieved rates of over 200 meters per week, though this is dependent on the size of the TBM
Ie, that rock tunneling can be > 3x quicker than soil tunneling.
- ewhanley 2y agoRock often has sufficient structural integrity to get by with some bolting vs adding structure (steel, shotcrete, etc) to the soil tunnel as they go
- Gibbon1 2y agoIt never seems to get stated directly by tunneling through stable rock has to be really easy. Like if you can drill and blast your way through you just need a small crew of workers and a dump truck. There is a half mile long tunnel in the California desert that an addled miner made with hand tools and dynamite over 38 years. Self funded and part time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel Then digging through unstable rock with water intrusion and danger of flooding the costs have to go way way up.