By rosebell
Following that TBM ida passed just over the first 4 kilometres in the main west tunnel on the H41 Sillschlucht – Pfons construction site in Austria on July 22nd, she completed half of her journey.
The current location of Ida is at a depth of almost 1 kilometre beneath the mountain peak and has already passed the Viggartal and Walzn fault zones, whereas the total drive length is 8.4 kilometres.
As one of the largest machines on the Brenner Base Tunnel project, the Herrenknecht Ag TBM has a cutterhead diameter of 10.37 metres, a length of 160 metres and a weight of approximately 2400 tonnes.
Considering that the quantity of installed tunnel segments since commissioning is roughly 22,000 in the two main tubes, all segments are being manufactured in the segment factory onsite removing the need for transportation and projected to remove nearly 27,000 truck journeys that would have been needed to transport the segments.
The date of passing Herrenknecht factory acceptance by this TBM in Schwanau, Germany, was February 2023, and after this process the TBM was dismantled and transported to the west assembly cavern on the H41 Sillschlucht-Pfons construction site.
As the dismantled parts of the TBM were taken over on the construction site, after reassembly, the TBM was prepared for takeoff south through the main west tunnel.
