Musk consistently thinks outside the box. That seems to upset a lot of people, but that's how innovation happens.
Here is an article on the Boring Company’s tunnel in Las Vegas and a look at the plan to connect the main casinos and airport. I haven’t been following what they are doing, so there could be other projects. I do know that the second round of new designs for boring machines, principally from universities, is now underway.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/06/10/elon-musk-s-47m-underground-tunnels-will-be-used-for-electric-cars
The Boring Company has also been trying to improve the tunneling process by holding a “Not a Boring Competition”. It had 400 applications with stated goals of increasing tunneling speed and reducing cost. On September 12, 2021, twelve finalists were selected to meet in Los Vegas and show their improvements. The finalists were:
1. Biggus Diggus from the United Kingdom
2. CU Hyperloop - U of Colorado, Boulder
3. Dirt Torpedo - DHBW Mosbach, Germany
4. Hyperloop UC - U of Cincinnati
5. MIT Hyperloop III - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. Paradigm Boring - U of Newfoundland, St Johns, Canada and Northeastern U, USA
7. Swissloop Tunneling - ETH Zurich, Switzerland
8. Team Badgermole - India and USA
9. The Diggeridoos - Virginia Tech
10. Warwick Boring Team - U of Warwick, United Kingdom
11. TUM Boring - Technical U of Munich, Germany
12. UMD Loop - U of Maryland
The winners were:
Safety - UMD Loop
Fastest Launch - The Diggeridoos
Innovation - Swissloop
Guidance - TUM Boring
Overall Winner - TUM Boring
You can see some pictures on the Boring Company website, but it is not clear what advances were made. Prufrock indicates some innovations.
https://www.boringcompany.com/
I went to google to find out some more about the digging machines, but most of the reporting was superficial and only covered that TUM Boring was the only one to dig the complete test tunnel and was one of the few that met the safety requirements.
TUM‘s design had a four horizontal tube revolving canister,which from a picture had large tubes the diameter of the tunnel with belt conveyors inside to carry the dug material. Apparently, the tunnel boring machine has to be stopped in order to shore up the tunnel, and this canister design allows the boring machine to continue digging. So far, I have not seen exactly how well their design works.
TUM submitted a 130 page report on their machine in order to be one of the twelve selected for the final competition. They were most concerned with Swissloop who had a computerized 3-D printing machine using fiberglass and a plastic to shore up the tunnel. However, TUM had a lot of help with their machine with many corporations supplying parts and advice. In the link below, Eaton tells how they helped to automate the control of the TUM boring machine.
https://www.eaton.com/nz/en-gb/markets/success-stories/TUM-boring-competition.html
HerrenhnechtAG has a nice video of their tunnel boring machine with explanation of how it operates. They are from southern Germany and probably employ people who have gone to TUM. They made the 30 km high speed rail tunnel through the mountains north of Madrid, Spain using a bore diameter of 9.51 meters, 31.2 feet. They say that they can construct and operate tunnel boring machines up to 14 meters in diameter, 45.9 feet.
This tunnel boring machine is a little different in that it is a double shield type that can continue boring while erecting the segments of high strength concrete for lining the tunnel. It employs two gripper feet which push against the rock walls and absorb the thrust and torsional forces necessary for the rotating cutting head. However, when tunnel geology becomes unstable, they can’t use the gripper feet and have to stop boring while they insert the concrete sections. This slows down operations significantly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ6lz4rcSFA
Swissloop Tunneling came in second in Nevada only because it wasn’t able to tunnel as fast as TUM. From their remarks on Twitter, they are presently working on improving the digging head on their machine. This summer they will enter the European tunneling contest and in January 2023 in Austin, Texas, the Boring Company will hold its second contest.
They won the innovation and design award and in their link below they explain the various functions of their machine. The digging head employs a rock cutting part and water to carry away the debris. This does away with the dust associated with tunneling and which the U of Maryland had to use special switches. They use a lot of hydraulics for stearing the machine, non-stop pushing, and rotating the head. Here they had help from Hagenbuch Hydraulics in the design.
Probably the most impressive part of the design was the 3-D printing of a glass fiber and plastic tunnel tube. Their university has done 3-D printing projects in the past, but mostly with cement buildings. However, the news reports and YouTube videos don’t explain how they do the 3-D printing. It looks like they have a spool of fiberglass cloth under the first set of round rods and maybe another under the second set. Then there are rollers to hold the tube in place as it is curing. This is followed by the double hydraulic pusher which presses outward to grab the tube. You may think that the pusher should be in front of the 3-D printer. We will see what changes are made for the next competitions.
https://swisslooptunneling.ch/tbm/
https://www.wevolver.com/article/swissloop-tunneling
Jim200... 1. Biggus Diggus from the United Kingdom ...
...
Is this in association with Monty Python's 'Biggus Dickus'?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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