Tunnelling projects are characterised by a sequence of single operations. Most of these steps today are performed with the help of information technology systems. For example:
All of these single steps are carried out by different machines and different computer systems and there is no easy way to make all of these systems talk to each other.
Why another standard?
In an ideal situation, all computer systems and machines along the chain of a tunnelling project would be able to talk to each other. In reality, the planning is completed a long time before a project starts and is likely to have been done on a CAD system which is not able to communicate with the drill rig used for blast hole drilling, or with the tunnel boring machine used to drill the tunnel. Consequently, all information from the CAD system has to be entered into the machine’s control system. This is an erroneous procedure and makes sudden changes difficult to co-ordinate while the project is running.
As an alternative to manual data handling, automated import/export routines may be used if available. Setting up these more or less customised software programs requires a great deal of effort, which is often limited in a project’s lifetime. As a result, most of the logging information acquired during the project is left unanalysed. Quality and performance of work may have been enhanced if analyses had been possible in “real time” during the project.
As in other industries, such as the GSM standard for cellular phone systems, it is certain that the standardisation of these data exchange formats will have positive effects on the productivity and quality of tunnelling projects and on the use of automated equipment in general. Furthermore, the price of third party products for data preparation and analysis will be reduced. At the same time there will be more products entering the market which can be used with more than one project.
The IREDES approach
Most of the machines used for tunnelling are also used in underground mining environments. Pressure to reduce costs has made automation, remote control and autonomous machine operations high priority activities in major mining companies. Therefore, a standardised data exchange will have a wider acceptance.
The initiative has now arrived with the International Rock Excavation Data Exchange Standard (IREDES), aiming to standardise all data exchange between rock excavation (tunnelling) machinery and central computer systems.
IREDES defines one common electronic language to be spoken by the machines and the central computer systems. This language defines data formats, for example, to supply a drill rig with the planned drill patterns or data formats the rig uses to report about its work, or production performance logs, production quality logs or tunnel scans. Therefore, a CAD system – or the underlying database – in future will only need one single export routine to supply all IREDES conformant drill rigs using an identical format, regardless of manufacturer, type or drill patterns.
When a drill pattern has been drilled, an additional profile scan might be available too. If this scan was made using IREDES-compatible devices, the planning engineer is able to see the result directly on a computer and can adjust the planning for future drill patterns during the ongoing project. This is a precondition to enhance accuracy, reduce overburden and consequently reduce cost.
Once the IREDES standard is established, the working sequence in a tunnelling project using the drill and blast method can be supported by the sequence.
The result is a tunnel line together with the corresponding profile information. IREDES conformant information may be used to specify the tunnel line.
The IREDES conformant tunnel line is then taken over by the software used for drill pattern planning. As a result, the drill pattern is available in an IREDES conformant format as a ‘planning data set’.
The drill rig – regardless of its manufacturer – receives the IREDES ‘planning data set’ to set up the drill pattern for automatic drilling. During drill operation, a number of IREDES conformant data sets may be created by the machine, for example:
After the pattern is drilled, the MWD information may be used by the charging equipment to adjust charging of explosives according to the rock conditions discovered while drilling. The charging machine generates an IREDES production quality report covering each single hole of the charge operation.
After blasting and loading, a tunnel scan may be performed, generating an IREDES conformant tunnel scan. The tunnel scan, together with the MWD information and the charge report, is taken over by an analysing software to propose and/or perform adjustments for drilling the next pattern.
Completely different types of equipment and software systems can work together and interact in an environment using IREDES standardised interfaces. Under the precondition that all equipment and software systems involved do support the IREDES standard, no further customised programming will be required. This enables smaller companies and smaller work sites effectively to perform high precision tunnelling projects at a reasonable cost level without customised software development.
At the same time, all quality assurance relevant logging information demanded by customers is generated automatically. The only requirement for analysis are software systems which are able to read the standardised IREDES logging format.
The IREDES standard’s architecture
The IREDES standard covers both traditional file-based data exchange using floppy disks, memory modules as carrier media and online networking data exchange using any kind of wire-based or wireless communication system as a carrier medium.
In both cases, IREDES uses identical procedures, so the application programs do not need to know how the information is transferred. Consequently, no additional application programming effort is required to exchange drill patterns via a network or modem instead of using a memory card.
IREDES is based on up to date technology and uses extensible markup language (XML) which was originally designed to specify the (database generated) content of internet pages, such as for online shops or similar web sites.
Consequently, all major databases today provide standard XML import/export features. This fact drastically simplifies the use of the IREDES standard within database environments. Furthermore, XML import/export routines will soon be available for all major standard software. In other industries, XML is also becoming the preferred solution for data exchange standardisation activities.
The IREDES standard is arranged in different levels:
Openness and flexibility
The IREDES standard will be successively extended to other equipment types and application profiles as demanded by the users.
Because of the standard’s open architecture, consisting of application and equipment profiles, non-rock excavation equipment may also be integrated. This might be applicable for rock reinforcement machines or ventilation equipment, and can be realised simply by adding new application profiles and equipment profiles without touching the existing parts of the standard.
Related Files
A working sequence of tunnelling projects
Working sequence of a tunnelling project using the drill and blast method
