Location
New York, New York
Date
16 Apr 2004, 8:00am - 9:30am
Abstract
Since the mid of the nineties in the City of Berlin there have been built underground installations, i.e. railway and street tunnels as well as foundations deep embedded in the groundwater, with some extraordinary measures. The surface area of all tunnel constructions of the VZBProject (inner city traffic tunnels in Berlin) amounts to approx. 240,000 square meters. The excavation pits for the tunnel structures have depths of more than 20 meters and widths of more than 100 meters. All this projects lead in the mid nineties to the characterization of the City of Berlin as Europe`s biggest construction site. A general overview of the transportation infrastructure project will be given here. A number of technical problems had to be resolved and new strategies devised at the planning stage because of the geotechnical and hydrogeological conditions in the central area of Berlin, the environmental requirements concerning groundwater conditions, and interaction with the surrounding green area and the nearby existing buildings. Several methods of tunnelling constructions in cohesionless soils with high ground water level were applied, such as caissons, shield driven tunnels and trough-type excavations (cut-and-cover tunnels). The geotechnical and hydrogeological conditions will be presented and the planning and realization of the tunnelling construction methods will be explained in the paper. Quality assurance was an important issue of the project and included an extensive monitoring system to ensure the quality of the constructions and to control the prior design and calculations. The impact of the project on the urban life and on the environment wouldn`t be minimized without a sophisticated project and ground water management. A very extensive measurement program in the frame of the quality assurance and geotechnical observation method was performed. It consisted of tension loading tests of single piles and groups of piles as well as measurements of anchor forces, wall deformations, uplift and leak water. Some data of monitoring are presented and discussed in this case history report.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
5th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2004 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Savidis, Stavros A. and Rackwitz, Frank, "Geotechnical and Environmental Consideration by Planning and Construction of the Transportation Infrastructure in the Centre of Berlin" (2004). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 16.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/5icchge/session05/16
Geotechnical and Environmental Consideration by Planning and Construction of the Transportation Infrastructure in the Centre of Berlin
New York, New York
Since the mid of the nineties in the City of Berlin there have been built underground installations, i.e. railway and street tunnels as well as foundations deep embedded in the groundwater, with some extraordinary measures. The surface area of all tunnel constructions of the VZBProject (inner city traffic tunnels in Berlin) amounts to approx. 240,000 square meters. The excavation pits for the tunnel structures have depths of more than 20 meters and widths of more than 100 meters. All this projects lead in the mid nineties to the characterization of the City of Berlin as Europe`s biggest construction site. A general overview of the transportation infrastructure project will be given here. A number of technical problems had to be resolved and new strategies devised at the planning stage because of the geotechnical and hydrogeological conditions in the central area of Berlin, the environmental requirements concerning groundwater conditions, and interaction with the surrounding green area and the nearby existing buildings. Several methods of tunnelling constructions in cohesionless soils with high ground water level were applied, such as caissons, shield driven tunnels and trough-type excavations (cut-and-cover tunnels). The geotechnical and hydrogeological conditions will be presented and the planning and realization of the tunnelling construction methods will be explained in the paper. Quality assurance was an important issue of the project and included an extensive monitoring system to ensure the quality of the constructions and to control the prior design and calculations. The impact of the project on the urban life and on the environment wouldn`t be minimized without a sophisticated project and ground water management. A very extensive measurement program in the frame of the quality assurance and geotechnical observation method was performed. It consisted of tension loading tests of single piles and groups of piles as well as measurements of anchor forces, wall deformations, uplift and leak water. Some data of monitoring are presented and discussed in this case history report.
