ITD Cem Casts Chennai Metro Line-4’s 1st Tunnel Segment

ITD Cementation India Ltd. on Monday began pouring concrete to cast their very first tunnel ring segment for constructing Chennai Metro Line-4’s 10 km underground section between Power House Ramp – Light House Station.

Their yard in Muthukadu along ECR road will be used to cast approximately 9000 tunnel ring segments for constructing the 118.9 km Chennai Metro Phase 2 project’s 5.15 km Package UG-01 (Bharathidasan Road Station to Light House) and 4.877 km Package UG-02 (Kodambakkam Flyover Station to Bharathidasan Road Station).

Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) had awarded ITD with both package’s civil contracts in January 2022 for a combined contract value of Rs. 3743.24 crore and 48 month deadline.

Chennai Metro’s twin tunnels will have a 5.6 meter internal diameter. The first segment cast on Monday will be utilized on UG-1.

Here are some snaps via Arjun Dhotre. A tunnel ring is typically 1.4 m wide, and consists of 5 segments + 1 ‘key’ segment.

Here’s a roughly 4 month old image from Tata Projects’ yard in Kosapur with tunnel segments lined up for the 45.813 Line-3’s tunnels. Tata had commissioned S96 – their first of 7 TBMs in October to bore 9 km twin tunnels (total 18 km) for Package TU-01 (Venugopal Nagar – Kellys). ITD’s yard in Muthuadu will look quite similar in the coming months.

ITD plans to deploy four tunnel boring machines (TBMs). I hear 3 of those will be refurbished from Mumbai Metro Line-3’s Package UGC-04 (Herrenknecht S1073, S1074 and S1075). In addition, a new TBM will be procured from Herrenknecht with all 4 slated to undergo factory acceptance tests in the coming months at Herrenknecht’s plant in Tamil Nadu.

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– TMRG