Pipelines 2020
Evaluation of Construction Methods for a 135-Inch Diameter Tunnel Crossing of a Major Highway Bridge
Publication: Pipelines 2020
ABSTRACT
The crossing of Highway IH-69 with the City of Houston’s 108-in. water line presented unique design and construction issues. The tunnel design, which spans a major overpass, has a length of 1,150 LF with a primary liner diameter of 135-in. Along with the length, poor soil conditions posed major challenges to completing a successful installation. The soil conditions vary from full face of clay on the west, a full face of sand along the bore, to a mixed face consisting of clay and sand on the east. A 400-foot section of the drive showed coarse non-cohesive soils under the water table. This unstable material creates significant risk to the overpass structure and safe tunnel construction. The tunnel methods considered to successfully complete the crossing included soil stabilization with chemical grout coupled with a tunnel boring machine (TBM) with face closure abilities, or utilization of a pressurized face TBM. This tunnel diameter presents difficulties in selecting the means and methods of construction as it falls in the grey area defining the advantages between pipe jacking or building the tunnel primary liner in ring sets. During construction, the contractor proposed installing the portion under the bridge by open cut instead of tunneling. This method was evaluated but sidelined, as it was not perceived to reduce risk. Ultimately, the selected construction method consisted of using an earth pressure balance machine with jacked casing for the entire tunnel limits. Tunnel construction began in January 2020 and is past the IH-69 ROW as of early March.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Hasen, P.E., Michael (2015). “Geotechnical Investigation 108-inch Water Line along City Easements from Smith Road to Lee Road.”. HVJ Associates, Inc.
Peck, R. B. (1969). “Deep Excavations and Tunneling in Soft Ground.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of Soil Mechanics, State-of-the-Art Report, Mexico, 225–290.
Schmidt, B. (1974). “Prediction of Settlements Due to Tunneling in Soil: Three Case Histories.” Rapid Excavation and Tunneling Conference, 2nd Proceedings (2), 1179–1199.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Pipelines 2020
Pages: 504 - 512
Editors: J. Felipe Pulido, OBG, Part of Ramboll and Mark Poppe, Brown and Caldwell
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8320-6
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Aug 6, 2020
Published in print: Aug 6, 2020
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.