Week 7: Conventional tunnelling and some key concepts

Professor Robert Galler (Montanuniversität Leoben) held an amazing lecture presenting the fundamentals of Austrian approach to Tunnelling. He went from the Conventional excavation technique, taking into consideration the fundamental static behaviour of the ground, to the tendering, design and construction phases, where precise attention is laid to the responsibilities and cooperation between the involved parties. I must say their approach is very smart, not only from the excavation technique viewpoint, so there is quite much to learn from such a solid model.

Professor Robert Galler and students after his lecture on Conventional Tunnelling.

Professor Claudio Oggeri from Politecnico di Torino introduced the General Concepts of Monitoring. This is the key tool for the comparison between the predicted and the real situation of the whole tunnel project, it is also fundamental for the control of the safety and stability from the construction to the operation. Defining threshold values for each measured parameter is a must.

European Standards introduced by Prof. Oggeri regarding Monitoring Plan.

A complete day was dedicated to Concrete Technology by Mapei UTT (Underground Technology Team) experts. Cristiano Maltese tackled the durability of the material from the basic chemistry of the involved reactions, defining the main degradation phenomena and the mitigation measures that must be taken into consideration while designing, preparing, casting and curing the concrete.

Dr. Cristiano Maltese and Master's students after Concrete Technology lecture.

Carlo Pistolesi emphasised on the mix design of concrete, taking into consideration the exposure classes, the required resistance and some other particular requirements of each project to define the right proportions and composition. The conclusion is that knowing very well this material is of paramount importance in order to be able to produce the durable structures required for tunnelling purposes.

Eng. Carlo Pistolesi and the students after his lecture on Concrete Technology.

Professor Peila continued with his series of lectures focused on Ground Improvement techniques, going deeply in this occasion into permeation grouting solution. He presented the technological aspects, grouting mixtures and the design and testing procedures for a proper result in terms of continuity, permeability and strength without causing disturbances to surface structures. The lecture was combined with plenty of case history from his former professional experience as a young engineer in a grouting company.

This week concluded preparing the field for the topic of next week that will be Numerical Modelling. Professor Borri Brunetto from Politecnico di Torino held a fantastic theoretical lecture on the fundamentals of numerical methods, starting from the mathematics of continuum mechanics and going through the background theories solved by Numerical Models to obtain a computationally efficient and convergent to a good approximation solution.