Direct use of excavated material in mechanised tunnelling - development of the prototype

The DRAGON project (Development of Resource-efficient and Advanced Underground Technologies) is intended to improve resource efficiency in tunnelling processes by providing the excavated material as a raw material. The project deals with the systematic reuse of excavated material from tunnel boring machines (TBMs) and is mainly focussed on the development of specific automated analysis and separation technologies. This enables resource-efficient reuse of excavated material through the installation of innovative technology directly on the TBM. The physical characteristics of excavated material can be concluded by measuring the disc cutter load. The mineralogical and/or elementary parameters will be detected by a fully automated side pass analysis system. For this purpose, Herrenknecht AG and the Montanuniversitat Leoben are working with other internationally renowned partners in the framework of the DRAGON project on various methods of characterising excavated material. (A)