The management of excavated materials from the Lyon‐Turin rail link project

Abstract

The Lyon-Turin rail link project is a major part of the European Corridor no. 5, Lisbon-Kiev. The management and use of the excavated materials have been identified as one of the major issues concerning project approval since the very first stage of the study. The following paper describes the methods chosen by the French and Italian authorities to improve the use of some 20 million t resulting from the excavation of 150 km of tunnels, representing 60 million t of materials. The presentation mainly focuses on two tunnels, the Chartreuse tunnel -24.7 km, two tubes -and the base tunnel Maurienne-Ambin -approx. 53 km, two tubes -under the Alps between France and Italy. All the tools today available are being used by the designer in order to prepare the tender documents, including industrial test production of concrete aggregates. The important role of the owner of the project is also mentioned with the aim of optimising the management and recycling of the excavated materials.

Applicability of excavated rock material: A European technical review implying opportunities for future tunnelling projects

“…The Euralpin Lyon-Turin (TELT) project currently under construction will connect France and Italy via new railway lines as part of the TEN-T Lissabon-Kiew axis and is split into a French part from Lyon to Saint-Jean-De-Maurienne, an international part from Saint-Jean-De-Maurienne to Bruzolo dedicated to TELT (Burdin and Monin, 2009), and an Italian section dedicated to the RFI, a sub-branch consortium of the project. The total length of the project consists of 300 km, whereas about 150 km are covered by 10 tunnels with a total excavated volume of 60 million tons (Burdin and Monin, 2009). Main French tunnels are the Chartreuse and Montcenis Base tunnel excavated in gneiss, granite, molasse, limestone and glacial moraine formations.…”

“…disposal (class 3) due to bad rock quality or political decisions forcing the owner to dump the excavated material, usage as embankments and bearing stratum (class 2) and concrete aggregate production (class 1) (written communications with Jacques Burdin). The use of excavated material is subject to the project owner's responsibility based on contractual negotiations (Burdin and Monin, 2009). For the TELT project, the same material requirements for concrete aggregate production apply as for the Gotthard and Lötschberg Base tunnels.…”

“…For the TELT project, the same material requirements for concrete aggregate production apply as for the Gotthard and Lötschberg Base tunnels. Three aggregate classes with a grain size of 16 mm will be produced (Burdin and Monin, 2009). To guarantee high quality concrete, caution was spent on sand production requiring special crushers for processing.…”

“…For the whole project, 140 site investigation drillings have been performed including two directed drillings. Core material was used to analyse and predict application potential along the tunnels for a period of six consecutive years (Burdin and Monin, 2009). For large-scale laboratory analyses, two processing plants have been installed on the French side to simulate potential application scenarios.…”

“…The current highest-ranked usage value of excavated material is the production of concrete aggregates as showed in the Gotthard, Lötschberg, HL-LHC or TELT projects (AlpTransit Gotthard, 2017;Burdin and Monin, 2009;Teuscher et al, 2007;. The application of face stabilization foam and geopolymers bear potential especially for fine-grained, clay-rich rock material as this is the case for FCC's Molasse formation (Minder et al, 2016;Zumsteg et al, 2013).…”