Automatization in Expansion of Slurry Feed and Outflow Pipes in Shield Tunnelling Construction

With the increase of underground developments in the cities, shield method became important and widely used as one of the tunnelling methods. However, the labour shortage problem of the construction industry lead its introduction of high technologies of unmanned construction work. The recent developments in the shield technologies have advanced the automatization of the construction method and their satisfactory effects upon productivity and safety have been confirmed. For the overall unmanned shield work, it is very important that each incidental works to the main shield excavation are also automatized along the developments in the excavation method. This paper describes the fully automatized equipment for the expansion of the slurry feed and outflow pipes which is one of the most important incidental works for the slurry type shield machine.