By Rose Bell
On Saturday, June 15th, TBM Lilia following successfully navigating the Viggartal and Walzn fault zones, without any significant difficulties, completed the first 3 kilometres of her advance on the Brenner Base Tunnel construction site H41 Sillschlucht-Pfons.
The quantity of dug rock by Lilia, which was commissioned on May 2nd, 2023, is 348,900 m³ of so far.
The TBM is now progressive towards the final challenge of completing the remaining 5.4 km to its destination.
According to Ivan Zamberlan, lot controller for construction lot H41 Sillschlucht-Pfons: “After crossing the Viggartal and Walzn fault zones, Lilia has now reached her first 3 km. As with Ida, this is a great satisfaction and a great achievement for which we must first of all congratulate the workers who work day after day on this important project deep in the mountain.”
Alongside with moving towards south, installing the segments, which are the precast concrete parts that form the inner shell of the tunnel, is also up to Lilia. Each segment consists of six concrete segments with a total weight of around 60 tons each.
Currently almost 20,000 segments have been installed in the two main tubes, whereas all segments are manufactured in the segment factory directly on the construction site, which represents a significant environmental advantage, as otherwise around 27,000 trucks would be necessary to transport the segments.
Additionally, environmental sustainability is another factor that plays an important role in the construction of the Brenner Base Tunnel.
The tunnel is projected to significantly change mobility in Europe.
