How to Go About Burying 16,000-Ton Tunnel Segments Under a River

Throughout the summertime , six large flatboat - alike vessels floated out of Baltimore ’s harbor . These were n’t gravy boat , they were gargantuan concrete tubes , destined for a tunnel in Southern Virginia that will expand a busy subterranean main road that connects two character of the state of matter .

This week , those tunnel segments will set forth to be installed under the Elizabeth River and engineering firm Skanska has releaseddetailed informationabout how precisely they are burying those 16,000 - ton burrow segments below a marshy river bottom .

TheElizabeth River Tunnelsis a transportation project launched in 2011 to double the electrical capacity of the existing Midtown Tunnel , which connect the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth , Virginia by car . It ’s one of the orotund base projects currently take place in the U.S. But it ’s also in an extremely tender bionomic region — the Elizabeth is the same river that ’s part of alarger restitution programto clean and recompense the watershed that I ’ve write about before . The project needs to have as light a touching on the surrounding environment as possible .

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Since the tunnel section were vomit in Baltimore , the first step for the journeying was to enthral those segment almost 220 mi away . plainly the 350 - foot - long concrete underground were far too heavy ( and inefficient ) to haul via truck , so engineers used the river ’s innate fare great power . The segments were closed off on one side so they could float like barges , manoeuver out the Chesapeake Bay and back up the Elizabeth River , where a oceanic abyss awaited the segment ’ arrival .

The rest of the legal action run low on underwater , so Skanskacreated an infographicto illustrate the process .

First , 40,000 tons of aggregate and gumption are dropped into the trench , where they ’re mark down to a tolerance of one inch by a form of grit - plow gadget suspend from above .

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Then , the actions used to make the segments buoyant for the journey have to be reverse . So two substructure of concrete is pumped into the top and four million gallons of river water swamp into the light ballast to help sink the section down to the foundation . Once in place , a hydraulic arm seal it to the adjacent segment .

Once the segment is secure , 30 - column inch pipes begin layering back the aggregate and George Sand , which has to be done equally to ensure right dispersion of atmospheric pressure . Then 68,000 tons of armour gemstone have to go on top to check that that the burrow is n’t offend by perverse keystone .

This process will be repeated 11 meter full ( 6 segment are already on land site , with 5 more on the fashion ) , but each sentence is a fleck different since the curvature and shape of each segment is unequaled . As each tunnel part is completed , crews move inside to the next section to start install lighting and other roadway details . The entire labor is expected to be eat up by 2016 . [ Skanska ]

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