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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TUM-VAN |
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TUNNEL (Fr. tonne!, later tonneau, a diminutive from Low Lat. tonna, tunna, a tun, cask) , a more or less horizontal under-ground passage made without removing the top soil. In former times any long tube-like passage, however constructed, was called a tunnel. At the present day the word is sometimes popularly applied to an underground passage constructed by trenching down from the surface to build the arching and then refilling with the top soil; but a passage so constructed, although indistinguishable from a tunnel when completed, is more cor- rectly termed a " covered way," and the operations " cutting " and " covering," instead of tunnelling. Making a small tunnel, afterwards to be converted into a larger one, is called " driving a heading," and in mining operations small tunnels are termed " galleries," " driftways " and " adits." If the under-ground passage is vertical it is a shaft; if the shaft is begun at the surface the operations are known as " sinking "; and it is called a " rising" if worked upwards from a previously constructed heading or gallery. Tunnelling has been effected by natural forces to a far greater extent than by man. In limestone districts innumerable swallow-holes, or shafts, have been sunk by the rain water following joints and dissolving the rock, and from the bottom of these shafts tunnels have been excavated to the sides of hills in a manner strictly analogous to the ordinary method of executing a tunnel by sinking shafts at intervals and driving headings therefrom. Many rivers find thus a course under-ground. In Asia Minor one of the rivers on the route of the Mersina railway extension pierces a hill by means of a natural tunnel, whilst a little south at Seleucia another river flows through a tunnel, 20 ft. wide and 23 ft. high, cut 1600 years ago through rock so hard that the chisel marks are still discernible. The Mammoth Cave of Kentucky and the Peak caves of Derbyshire are examples of natural tunnelling. Mineral springs bring up vast quantities of matter in solution. It has been estimated that the Old Well Spring at Bath has discharged since the beginning of the 19th century solids equivalent to the excavation of a 6 ft. by 3 ft. heading 9 M. long; and yet the water is perfectly clear and the daily flow is only the 15oth part of that pumped out of the great railway tunnel under the Severn. Tunnelling is also carried on to an enormous extent by the action of the sea. Where the Atlantic rollers break on the west coast of Ireland, or on the seaboard of the western Highlands of Scotland, numberless caves and tunnels have been formed in the cliffs, beside which artificial tunnelling operations appear insignificant. The most gigantic subaqueous demolition hitherto carried out by man was the blowing up in 1885 of Flood Rock, a mass about 9 acres in extent, near Long Island Sound, New York
With so many examples of ,natural caves and tunnels in existence it is not to be wondered at that tunnelling was one of the earliest works undertaken by man, first for dwellings and tombs, then for quarrying and mining, and finally for water-supply, drainage, and other requirements of civilization. A Theban king on ascending the throne began at once to drive the tunnel which was to form his final resting-place, and per-severed with the work until death. The tomb of Mineptah at Thebes was driven at a slope for a distance of 350 ft. into the hill, when a shaft was sunk and the tunnel projected a farther length of about 300 ft., and enlarged into a chamber for the sarcophagus. Tunnelling on a large scale was also carried on at the rock temples of Nubia
hall
No practical advance was made on the tunnelling methods of the Romans until gunpowder came into use. Old engravings of mining operations early in the 17th century show that excavation was still accomplished by pickaxes or hammer
(From Agricola's De re metallica, Base., 162 r.) Crude methods of ventilation by shaking cloths in the headings and by placing inclined boards at the top of the shafts are also on record. In 1766 a tunnel 9 ft. wide, 12 ft. high and 288o yds. long was begun on the Grand Trunk Canal, England, and completed eleven years later; and this was followed by many others. On the introduction of railways tunnelling became one of the ordinary incidents of a contractor's work; probably upwards of 4000 railway tunnels have been executed. Tunnelling under Rivers and Harbours.In 1825 Marc Isambard Brunel began, and in 1843 completed, the Thames tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping now used by the East London railway. He employed a peculiar " shield," made of timber, in several independent sections. Part of the ground penetrated was almost liquid mud, and the cost of the tunnel was about D1300 per lineal yard. In 1818 he took out a patent for a tunnelling process, which included a shield, and which mentioned cast iron as a surrounding wall
in small space as soon as the segments are bolted together, and they can be caulked water-tight. In 1830 Lord Cochrane (afterwards loth earl
The Severn tunnel (fig. 16), 41 M. in length for a double line of railway, begun in 1873 and finished in 1886, Hawkshaw, Son, Hayter & Richardson being the engineers and T. A. Walker the. contractor, is made almost wholly in the Trias and Coal Measure formations, but for a short distance at its eastern end passes through gravel. At the lowest part the depth is 6o ft. at low water and loo ft. at high water, and the thickness of sandstone over the brickwork is 45 ft. Under a depression in the bed of the river on the English side there is a cover of only 3o ft. of marl. Much water was met with throughout. In 1879 the works were flooded for months by a land spring on the Welsh side of the river, and on another occasion from a hole in the river bed at the Salmon Pool. This hole was subsequently filled with clay and the works completed beneath. Two preliminary headings were driven across the river to test the ground. Bleak-ups " were made at intervals of two to five chains and the arching was carried on at each of these points. All parts of the excavation were timbered, and the greatest amount excavated in any one week was 6000 cub. yds. The total amount of water raised at all the pumping stations, is about 27,000,000 gallons in twenty-four hours. The length of the Mersey tunnel (fig. 15) between Liverpool and Birkenhead between the pumping shafts on each side of the river is one mile. From each a drainage heading was driven through the sandstone with a rising gradient towards the centre of the river. This heading was partly bored out by a Beaumont machine to a diameter of 7 ft. 4 in. and at a rate attaining occasionally 65 lineal yds. per week. All of the tunnel excavation, amounting to 320,000 cub. yds., was got out by hand labour, since heavy blasting would have shaken the rock. The minimum cover between the top of the arch and the bed of the river is 3o ft. Pumping machinery is provided for 27,000,000 gallons per day, which is more than double the usual quantity of water. Messrs Brunlees & Fox were the engineers, and Messrs Waddell the contractors for the works, which were opened in 1886, about six years after the beginning of operations. In 1869 P. W. Barlow and J. H. Greathead built the Tower foot-way under the Thames, using for the first time a cast-iron lining and a shield which embodied the main features of Brunel's design. Barlow had patented a shield in 1864, and A. E. Beach one in 1868. The latter was used in a short masonry tunnel under Broadway, New York
In the same year compressed air was used for the first time in any important tunnel by D. C. Haskin in the famous first Hudson River tunnel, New York City. This was to be of two tubes, each having internal dimensions of about 16 ft. wide by 18 ft. high. The excavation as fast as made was lined with thin steel plates, and inside of these with brick. In June 188o the northerly tube had reached 36o ft. from the Hoboken shaft, but a portion near the latter, not of full size, was being enlarged: Just after a change of shifts the compressed air blew a hole through the soft silt in the roof at this spot, and the water entering drowned the twenty men who were working therein. From time to time money was raised and the work advanced. Between 1888 and 1891 the northerly tunnel was extended 2000 ft. to about three-fourths of the way across, with British capital and largely under the direction of British engineersSir Benjamin Baker and E. W. Moir. Compressedair and a shield were used, and the tunnel walls were made of bolted segments of cast iron. The money being exhausted, the tunnel was allowed to fill with water, and it so remained for ten years: Both tubes were completed in 1908.The use of compressed air in the Hudson tunnel, and of annular shields arid cast-iron lined tunnel in constructing the City & South London railway (1886 to 189o) by Great-head, became widely known and greatly influenced subaqueous and soft-ground tunnelling thereafter. The pair of tunnels for this railway from near the Monument to Stockwell, from 10 ft. 2 in. to 10 ft. 6 in. interior diameter, were constructed mostly in clay and without the use of compressed air, except for a comparatively short distance through water-bearing gravel. In this gravel a timber heading was made, through which the shield was pushed. The reported total cost was 84o,o0o. Among the tunnels constructed after the City & South London work was well advanced, lined with cast-iron segments, and constructed by means of annular shields and the use of compressed air, were the St Clair (Joseph Hobson, engineer) from Sarnia to Port Huron, 1889-1890, through clay, and for a short distance through water-bearing gravel, 6000 ft., 18 ft. internal diameter; and the notable Blackwall tunnel under the Thames (Sir Alexander Binnie, engineer, and S. Pearson & Sons, contractors), through clay and 400 ft. of water-saturated gravel, 1892-1897, about 3116 ft. long, 24 ft. 3 in. in internal diameter. The. shield, 19 ft. 6 in. long, contained a bulkhead with movable shutters, as foreshadowed in Baker's pro-posed shield (fig. 2). Numerous tunnels of_~ small diameter have !=,A' t;, = }i been similarly con- structed under the Thames and Clyde for -L. w e= s ---t s r electric and cable r = r , : 'e : e `, ways, several for sewers in Melbourne, and two under the Seine at Paris for sewer siphons. The Rotherhithe tunnel, under the Thames, for a road-way, with a length of 4863 ft. between portals, of which about 1400 ft. are directly under the river, has a t _- seen= largest cross : y r ~ section of any sub- -e %~%%% eseeet aqueous tube of this FIG. 2.B. Baker's pneumatic shield. type in the world (see fig. 3). It was begun in 1904 and finished in 1908, Maurice Fitzmaurice being the engineer of design and construction, and Price & Reeves the contractors. It penetrates sandy and Shelly clay overlying a seam of limestone beneath which are pebbles and loamy sand. A preliminary tunnel for exploration, 12 ft. in diameter, was driven across the river, the top being within 2 ft. of the following main tunnel. The top of the main tunnel excavation in the middle of the river was only 7 ft. from the bed of the Thames, and a temporary blanket of filled earth, usually allowed in similar cases, was prohibited owing to the close proximity of the docks. The maximum progress in one day was 12.5 ft., and the average in six days 10.4 ft. The air compressors were together capable of supplying 1,000,000 cub. ft. of air per hour. Some tunnels of marked importance of this typeto be operated solely with electric carshave been built under the East and Hudson rivers at New York. Two tubes of 15 ft. interior diameter and 4150 ft. long penetrate gneiss and gravel directly under the East River between the Battery and Brooklyn. They were begun in 1902, with Wm. B. Parsons and George S. Rice as engineers, and were finished in December 1907, under the direction of D. L. Hough of the Detroit Hirer Tunnel. tubes. River Seine, Park. t tube Scale of Feet t0 20 3? ro S 0 Frc. 3.-Cross Sections of Tunnels under Rivers and Harbours. New York Tunnel Company. They carry subway trains. In one of the blow-outs of compressed air a workman was blown through the gravel roof into the river above. He lived until the next day. Two other tubes of the same size built also through gneiss and gravel between 1905 and 1907 by the Degnon Contracting Company, with R. A. Shailer as the contractors' engineer, go from 42nd Street to Long Island City. Four much larger tubes (see fig. 3) built in 1904 to 1909, for the Pennsylvania railroad, with Alfred Noble as chief engineer, S. Pearson & Son as contractors, and E. W. Moir as general manager, cross from 32nd and 33rd Streets to Long Island. The maximum average progress per day (one heading) for the best month's work was: rock, 4.1 ft.; rock and earth, 3.8 ft.; earth, with full sand face, 12.8 ft. The best methods of preventing blow-outs were found to consist of employing clay blankets (sometimes 25 ft. thick) on the river bed, which could be carried up to 20 ft. depth of water, and of filling the pores of the sand and gravel with blue lias lime or cement grout. The maximum air pressure was 38 lb per sq. in. In the case of sand face with poor leaky cover the usual practice was to make the air pressure equal to that of water from the surface down to about a quarter the distance below the top of the shield. The average amount of free air supplied per man per hour was approximately 2300 cub. ft. On the Hudson river side two tubes of the same size as those in the East river are for the Pennsylvania trains to New Jersey
jersey
The two tubes from Morton Street were completed under the direction of Charles M. Jacobs, who was also chief engineer of the four other Hudson River tubes. The contractors for the Hudson tubes for the Pennsylvania road were the O'Rourke Contracting Company. Skilful treatment was required to overcome the difficulties on the New York side of the Hudson in all the tubes where the face excavation was partly in rock and partly in soft earth. Most of their length, however, was through silt, and in this the tunnelling was the easiest and most rapid that has ever been carried out in subaqueous work, 5o lineal ft. per day being sometimes accomplished. A large proportion of the silt which under ordinary processes would be taken into the tunnel through the shield, carried to the shore and got rid of by expensive methods, was by the latter process merely displaced as the shield with nearly or quite closed diaphragm was pushed ahead. The East Boston tunnel, the first important example of a shield-built monolithic concrete arch, from the Boston Sub-way to East Boston, is 1.4 M. long, 3400 ft. being under the harbour. One mile was excavated by tunnelling with roof shields about 29 ft. wide, through clay containing pockets of sand and gravel. The engineer was H. A. Carson, and the contractors the Boston Tunnel Construction Company and Patrick McGovern. Some 25 M. of waterworks brick-lined tunnels have been built since 1864, mostly in clay, under the Great Lakes, without the use of shields, though in the later ones compressed air was utilized. A large portion of the latest Cleveland tunnel, 9 ft. interior diameter, was built at the rate of 17 ft. per day at a cost of about 818 per ft. During this work three explosions of inflammable gases occurred, in which nineteen men were killed and others were injured. Later a fire at the shaft in the lake caused the death of ten men. Work was thereafter completed under the engineering direction of G. H. Benzenberg. Less serious accidents, principally explosions of marsh gas, occurred in many of the other tunnels. In one case (at Milwaukee under Benzenberg) drift material was penetrated, with large boulders and coarse and fine gravel, and without any sand or clay filling, apparently in direct communication with the lake bottom. At times the necessary air pressure was 42 lb per sq. in. Subaqueous Tunnels made by sinking Tubes, Caissons, &'c.ln 1845 De la Haye, in England, doubtless having in mind thetedious and difficult work of the Thames tunnel, proposed to make tunnels under water by sinking large tubes on a previously prepared bed and connecting them together. Since then many inventors have proposed similar schemes. In 1866 Belgrand sank twin plate-iron pipes, 1 metre diameter and 156 metres long, under the Seine at Paris for a sewer siphon, and there have since been numerous examples of sunk cast-iron subaqueous water-pipes. It is believed that the first tunnel of this class, large enough for men to move upright in, was by H. A. Carson, assisted by W. Blanchard and F. D. Smith, in 1893-1894, in the outer portion of Boston harbour, for the metropolitan sewer outlet. The later tubes were about 9 ft. exterior diameter, in sections each 52 ft. long, weighing about 210,000 lb, made of brick and concrete, with a skin of wood and water-tight bulk-heads at each end. A trench was dredged in the harbour bed and saddles were accurately placed to support the tubes. The latter, made in cradles above water alongside a wharf, were lowered by long vertical screws moved by steam power, and were towed 4 to 1 m. to their final positions. After sufficient water had been admitted they were lowered to their saddles by travel-ling shears on temporary piles. The temporary joints between consecutive sections were made by rubber gaskets between flanges which were bolted together by divers. The later operations were backfilling the trench over the pipes, and in each section pumping out the water, removing its bulkheads, and making good the masonry between consecutive bulk-heads, this masonry being inside the flanges. This work, about 1500 ft. in length, was done without contractors, by labourers and foremen under the immediate control of the engineers, and was found perfectly tight, straight and sound. The double-track railroad tunnel at Detroit, made in 1906-1909, under the direction of an advisory board consisting of W. J. Wilgus (chairman), H. A. Carson and W. S. Kinnear (the last-named being chief engineer), is 12 m. long, with a portion directly under the river of z m. The method used under the river (proposed by Wilgus) is an important variation on the Boston scheme . A trench was dredged with a depth equal to the thickness of the tunnel below the river bed and about 70 ft. below the river surface, and grillages were accurately placed in it to support the ends of thin steel tube-forms, inside of which concrete was to be moulded and outside of which de-posited. These tubes, each about 23 ft. in diameter and 262.5 ft. long, were in pairs (one tube for each track), and were connected sidewise and surrounded by thin steel diaphragms 12 ft. apart. Planking, to limit the concrete, was secured outside the diaphragms (see fig. 3). The forms were made tight, bulkheaded at their ends, floated into place, sunk by admitting water, set on the grillages, and the ends of successive pairs connected together by bolts through rubber gaskets and flanges. The succeeding pair of tubes was not lowered until concrete had been deposited through the river around the tubes of the preceding pair. The following steps were to re-move the water from one pair of tubes, mould inside a lining of concrete 20 in. thick, remove the contiguous bulkheads, and repeat again and again the processes described until, the subaqueous tunnel was complete.The New York Rapid Transit tunnel under Harlem river, built 1904-1905, has two tubes, each about 15 ft. diameter and 400 ft. long, with a surrounding shell of cast iron itself surrounded by concrete. The outside width of concrete is about 33 ft. Its top is 28 ft. below high water and about 3 ft. below the bed of the river. D. D. McBean, the sub-contractor, dredged a trench in the river to within 7 or 8 ft. of the required depth. He then enclosed a space of the width of the tunnel from shore to mid-stream with 12-in. sheet piling, which was evenly cut off some 2 ft. above the determined outside top of the tunnel. On top of this piling he sank and tightly fitted a flat temporary roof of timber 3 ft. thick in sections, and covered this with about ft. of dredged mud. Water was expelled from this subaqueous chamber by compressed air, after which the remaining earth was easily taken out, and the iron and concrete tunnel walls were then built in the chamber. For the remaining part of the river the foregoing process was varied by cutting off the sheet piling at mid-height of the tunnel and making the upper half of the tunnel, which was built above and lowered in sections through the water, serve as' the roof of the chamber in which the lower half of the tunnel was built. The tunnels of the Metropolitain railway of Paris (F. Bien-venue, engineer-in-chief) under the two arms of the Seine, between Place Chateleet and Place Saint Michel, were made by means of compressed-air caissons sunk beneath the river bed,were next made by the aid of temporary small caissons sunk through about 26 ft. of earth under the river. The tops of the side walls were made even with the end walls. A steel rectangular coffer-dam (figs. 5 and 6) was sunk to rest with rubber or clay joint on these surrounding walls. The coffer-dam had shafts reaching above the surface of the water, so that the earth core was easily taken out (after removing the water) in free air. The adjacent chambers under the caissons were then connected together. Three caissons, of a total length of 396 ft., were used under the larger arm, and two, of an aggregate length Mountain Tunnels for Railways. Tunnel. Location. Length. Internal Width and Material Average Approximate (miles) Height. penetrated. progress per cost per day =24 hrs. (lin, yds.). lin. yd. Mont Cenis (t tunnel) . Modane, France and 7.98 26 ft. 3 in. X 24 ft. Bardonecchia, Italy. 7 in. (horseshoe). Granitic 2.57 226 St Gotthard (I tunnel) Goschenen and Airolo in 9.3 26 ft. 3 in. X 24 ft. Switzerland. 7 in. (horseshoe). Granitic 6.01 143 Arlberg (I tunnel) . . Innsbruck
in Tirol. 9.07 Io8 Simplon (2 tunnels) . Brigue, Switzerland and 12.3 16 ft. 5 in. X 19 ft. Gneiss, mica schist, I1.63 148 Iselle, Italy. 6 in. each (min.). limestone and disintegrated mica schist rock. L. Chagnaud being the contractor. They were built of plates of sheet steel and masonry, with temporary steel diaphragms in the ends, filled with concrete, making a cross wall
(From Engineering News, New York.) tunnel caissons for the Metropolitain under the Seine at Paris. M. W.of 132 ft., under the smaller arm of the Seine. The cost of the tunnel was 7000 francs per lineal metre. William Sooy Smith published in Chicago, in 1877, a description of a scheme for building a tunnel under the Detroit river by sinking caissons end to end, each caisson to be secured to the adjoining one by tongued and grooved guides, and a nearly water-tight connexion between the two' to be made by means of an annular inflated hose.Tunnelling through Mountains.Where a great thickness of rock overlies a tunnel through a mountain, it may be necessary to do the work wholly from the two ends without intermediate shafts. The problem largely resolves itself into devising the most expeditious way of excavating and removing the rock. Experience has led to great advances in speed and economy, as may be seen from examples in the above table. In 1857 the first blast was fired in connexion with the Mont Cenis works; in 1861 machine drilling was introduced; and in 1871 the tunnel was opened for traffic. With the exception of about 300 yds. the tunnel is lined throughout with brick or stone. During the first four years of hand labour the average progress was not more than 9 in. per day on each side of the Alps; but with compressed air rock-drills the rate towards the end was five times greater. In 1872 the St Gotthard tunnel was begun, and in 1881 the first locomotive ran through it. Mechanical drills were used from the beginning. Tunnelling was carried on by driving in advance a top heading about 8 ft. square, then enlarging this sideways, and finally sinking the excavation to invert level (see figs. 7 and 8). Air for working the rock-drills was compressed to seven atmospheres by turbines of about 2000 horse-power. The driving of the Arlberg tunnel was begun in r 88o and the work was completed in little more than three years. The main heading was driven along the bottom of the -tl (From Engineering News, New York.) Coffer-dam superimposed over joints between caissons in tunnels for the Metropolitain under the Seine at Paris. -34'08 >I wmmmuumn^ ill1=1UiRI z EammmmzammarE % Irii^ii' 1.. A ImBIDOOMWEP End of Article: TUNNEL (Fr. tonne!, later tonneau, a diminutive from Low Lat. tonna, tunna, a tun, cask) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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