L&T’s 1st Chennai Metro Phase 2 TBM Kaveri Starts Tunneling

Larsen & Toubro on Thursday commissioned S-1327A – their 1st of 8 tunnel boring machines for the 118.9 km Chennai Metro Phase 2 project at Chennai’s Greenways Road Station

This 100m long Ø6.65m Herrenknecht earth pressure balance (EPB) machine nicknamed TBM Kaveri along with 7 other TBMs will construct approximately 12 km twin tunnels (total 24 km) on the new 45.813 km Line-3 between Kellys and Taramani Road Junction stations.

For its first assignment, the machine from Greenways Road will bore 1.226 km southwards towards Adyar Junction Station which CMRL hopes to complete in August 2023. Along the way it’ll bore under Adyar River near Thiru Vi. Ka. Bridge.

The machine had passed factory acceptance tests (FAT) in July 2022 at Herrenknecht’s local facility in Chennai and L&T’s team began lowering its parts into the Greenways TBM Launch Shaft in January 2023.

L&T was awarded Package TU-02’s Rs. 2385 crore contract by Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL) in May 2021 with a 42 month deadline.

Scope of TU02: Construction of approximately 12 km twin bored tunnels (total = 24 km) from Kellys Station to Taramani Road Junction and the construction of diaphragm walls, entry/exit structures of Chetpet station, Royapettah Government Hospital Station, Thiruvanmiyu Station, and part diaphragm wall of Greenways Road Station, including launching and retrieval shafts at the above stations.

The machine’s back-up gantry will be lowered and attached for the main-drive later.

In the coming months TBM Kaveri’s sister machine, TBM Adyar (S-1326A), will begin tunneling works to build the parallel tunnel. Besides these 2 machines, L&T will deploy 4 new CRCHI machines and 2 refurbished Robbins machines from Mumbai Metro Line-3’s Package UGC-01.

Overall, this is the 4th of 23 TBMs in Phase 2 to start tunneling after Tata Projects’ TBM S96 & TBM S97 from Madhavarm Milk Colony towards Madhavaran High Road, and TBM S98 towards Venugopal Nagar.

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– TMRG