Working for main contractor HCC, Seli Overseas will handle the tunnelling which passes through Dolomitic Limestone along one third of the drive and slates along two thirds of the drive. A 150m section of low overburden, five shear zones and three fault zones are known challenges.
The machine will now be dismantled and sailed up to Mundra Port in India, from where to send it by road up to the Project Site. The TBM is expected to commence its assembly at the jobsite in July 2016.
A spokesman for the manufacturer gave these details about the TBM’s design, which involved input from Seli: "The critical zones will represent the most challenging ones and for that the TBM has been carefully designed. The cutterhead has a very robust yet versatile concept, mounting Heavy Duty 19” disc cutters but keeping twelve large bucket openings. The 4,200kW Electric VFD Main Drive will allow the cutterhead to cut the hardest rock zones at the maximum speed of 6rpm and also to deliver an exceptional torque over 22,000kNm to cope with those fractured parts of the alignment."
