ITD Lowers Chennai Metro Line-4’s 1st Tunnel Boring Machine

ITD Cementation on Tuesday started lowering and assembling their first tunnel boring machine (TBM) at Light House Station for 26.1 km Line-4 of the 116.1 km Chennai Metro Phase 2 project.

This 110m long Ø6.67m Herrenknecht Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) machine, S-1073B, will be deployed by ITD Cementation for Line-4’s 10 km underground section between Power House Ramp – Light House Station.

It had previously seen action for constructing Mumbai Metro Line-3’s tunnels between 2017-2020, and was then refurbished at Herrenknecht’s Alinjivakkam Village plant where it passed factory acceptance tests in January 2023.

Chennai’s Line-4 consists of roughly 16 kms of TBM tunnels (up & down line). Within those, this machine will be deployed to construct one of the tunnels on 5.15 km Package UG-01 from Light House Station’s TBM Launch Shaft at Marina Beach and get retrieved from Boat Club Station.

Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) had awarded ITD Cem with Line-4’s two underground contracts in January 2022 with a combined contract value of Rs. 3743.24 crore and 48 month deadline.

ITD in December 2022 had cast the 1st of roughly 9000 tunnel segments at their Muthukadu Casting Yard along ECR Road – view images here.

In the future, TBM S-1352A will be lowered at the same shaft to dig and build the parallel tunnel towards Boat Club. That new Herrenknecht machine had passed FAT in May 2023.

Back on Tuesday, Herrenknecht completed FAT on Line-4’s 4th and final TBM, S-1075B, which’ll be used on 4.87 km Package UG-02 connecting Kodambakkam Flyover – Boat Club.

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– TMRG