Inside an enormous shed in South Australia, workers have hit a manufacturing milestone with 1000 precast concrete tunnel segments completed for the River Torrens to Darlington Project.
But that’s just the start. More than 55,000 concrete segments will be manufactured at the Waterloo Corner facility in Adelaide’s north. The segments are for the lining of the Northern and Southern Tunnels of the T2D project, the final 10.5km section of the $15.4 billion North-South Corridor which traverses Adelaide’s inner-city area.
The Northern Tunnels include 2.2km of twin three-lane tunnels and the Southern include 4km of twin three-lane tunnels. Linking them will be an open motorway 2.5km in length.
In the 285-metre-long precast concrete facility at Waterloo Corner, up to 160 tunnel-lining segments weighing about 12 tonnes each will be made daily during the peak period of production supporting 60 local jobs.
Also on-site is Heidelberg Materials’ specialised concrete wet batch plant, a collaboration with the T2D Alliance*, which will supply the 280,000 m³ of concrete required for the segments.
Once manufactured, the precast segments will be transported to the Tunnel Boring Machine launch areas, where they will be placed on high-tech battery-electric Multi-Service Vehicles, which will deliver them to the TBMs to construct the tunnel walls.
Inside the TBMs, a specialised segment erector will progressively install the precast pieces into rings to form the tunnel walls, with each ring made up of 10 concrete segments.
The updated Certificate III in Manufacturing Mineral Products (Precast) is supporting the project’s growing precast workforce, creating new training opportunities. More than 60 workers have already enrolled in the traineeship, helping lay the foundations for a future concrete-skilled workforce.
John Holland, Bouygues Construction, Arcadis Australia, Jacobs, and Ventia comprise the T2D Alliance*. The first precast concrete tunnel-lining segment is expected to be installed in the T2D Project later this year.
Image: T2D Project’s completed precast concrete segments.
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About the author
Desi Corbett
Desi is the Editor of Concrete in Australia, at the helm since December 2013, and our weekly news writer since 2016. Her expertise in this field forms part of a journalism career spanning three decades. To get in touch please email desi@corbettcomms.com