China’s first-of-its-kind boring and blasting rig boosts hard-rock tunnel digging by 30%
Standard tunnel boring machines slow down in extremely hard or fractured mountain rock, which has led to delays in infrastructure projects
China has developed the world’s first boring-and-blasting machine, a new class of equipment designed to meet the challenges of tunnelling through complex geologies, as the country pushes forward with its infrastructure expansion.
Co-developed by Tsinghua University and a unit of state-owned China Railway Group, the “Xianglong” – with a diameter of 4.5 metres – rolled off the line in Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province.
The hybrid machine is smaller than conventional tunnel boring equipment but has the ability to integrate excavation with built-in drilling and blasting that boosts hard-rock digging efficiency by 30 per cent, according to a statement issued by the Hubei provincial government on Sunday.
Standard tunnel boring machines start to slow down in extremely hard or fractured mountain rock, which has led to delays in major infrastructure projects, the provincial government said. The new technology, built entirely with a domestic supply chain, was designed to address this problem.