Introduction to Immersed Tube Tunneling Symposium

Tirolo, Vincent; ,

Introduction to Immersed Tube Tunneling Symposium

by Vincent Tirolo, Pratt Inst, Brooklyn, United States,

Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Preparing for Construction in the 21st Century

Abstract:

Today's Symposium on Immersed Tube Tunneling is a continuation of a series of papers that began at Construction Congress '89 with discussion of mined tunnel subaqueous tunnels. At CC'89, four contractor's discussed their approach to preparing a mock competitive bid for a subaqueous rock tunnel constructed by either drill and blast or TBM and a subaqueous soft ground tunnel constructed using either compressed air or a earth pressure balance shield. Because of time restrictions, an alternative method of tunnel construction not considered at that time was an immersed tube tunneling. Immersed tube tunneling will be the subject of today's symposium. Immersed tube tunnels have been successfully utilized for subaqueous river crossing since they were first employed in the early 1900's during construction of a mass transit railroad tunnel across the Harlem River in New York City and a commercial rail tunnel crossing the Detroit River between the United States and Canada. Since these initial efforts, many of immersed tube tunnels have been constructed around the world in the last eighty years. The most well known tunnels include the Fort McHenry l-95 tunnel in Baltimore, MD; the numerous immersed tube tunnels under in Hampton Roads and the Elizabeth River in Virginia; the immersed tube tunnels of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority in San Francisco Bay; and the 63th Street Tunnel under the East River in New York City.

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