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AUSTRIA, CENTRAL EUROPE

Removing Highway
Bottlenecks in Austria
Dualling the
Crossroads of Europe
With its position in the heart of
Central Europe, Austria serves as a
transportation hub for virtually any
business needing to move goods
across the continent. For traffic
between the Balkan States and the
north, or diagonally across Europe
from east to south, Austria presents
the shortest route. Indeed, the poten-
tial for traffic nuisance is such that
trucks are currently banned from its
highways during the night hours.
In its efforts to upgrade to full
European standards, Austria is build-
ing more dual carriageways, and
driving parallel tunnels for a number
of existing bi-directional tunnels
across the country. In the tunnels, the
latest in Atlas Copco technology is
being employed, including Rocket
Boomers, Swellex rockbolts and MAI
self drilling anchors. Such projects are At the south end of the alignment, Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer L2 C at
the parallel tunnels at Graebern and
where the rock was generally too soft for Graebern south face.
Plabutsch, and a twin tube tunnel
project at Steinhaus, located near blasting, an Atlas Copco two-boom Rocket
Semmering. Boomer L2 C drilled holes for spiling and
bolting in the top heading, to enable
mechanical excavation. The area is inten-
Second Tube for Graebern sively folded and faulted, with a mixture
of competent and incompetent rock. As
A new 2.148 km-long tube has been driven there was no glacial cover during the
parallel to the existing Graebern tunnel in last million years, glacial erosion did
highly variable ground conditions. The not remove the highly tectonised and
faces at either end were in different strata, incompetent parts present at the southern
requiring a flexible approach to excavation portal.
and support. The centre section of the top heading
The contractors used Atlas Copco was generally left in place as a safety
Rocket Boomer drillrigs to excavate pillar, to support the tunnel face while
around 1.5 km of tunnel is to standard sectional lattice arches were installed at
70 sq m section, 400 m of which was in 1.0-1.2 m centres, together with rockbolts
excavation class 7 with a reinforced shot- and shotcrete. Part of the excavated face
crete or concrete invert, requiring an was also temporarily secured by 12 m-long
enlarged section of 78 sq m. self drilling anchors, which were grouted
An oversize safety section in the center in place. For systematic bolting, self
of the alignment will provide a third lane drilling or cement grouted anchors with
over a distance of 48 m, where vehicles lengths of 4 m or 6 m were used.
may park in an emergency, or possibly turn When required, 25 mm-diameter, 4 m-
around. They may also turn to enter a wide long pipe spiles were set around the roof
cross passage leading to the second tube, profile in 45 mm-diameter holes drilled by
which is big enough for trucks. the Rocket Boomer L2 C. Any blastholes

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Rock Support at Graebern Tunnel. required were drilled using 45 mm Atlas
Copco Secoroc bits.
The top heading was followed by a
2.7 m-high bench and invert, which was
excavated some 60-80 m back from the
face, but sometimes slipped back to 150 m
behind the face.
The north end of Graebern features
biotite gneiss, a more-competent metamor-
phic sedimentary rock with a high amount
of quartz and feldspar. Predominantly, the
rock mass is jointed and faulted, and so
mostly decomposed and friable. Therefore,
spiling with pipes was often an absolute
necessity. In addition, Swellex 4 m-long
bolts were set in the roof at the face as
immediate support.
Regular support comprised 15 cm of
Rocket Boomer 352 S at Steinhaus
portal.
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shotcrete with one layer of wire mesh and
4 m-long rockbolts. If spiling was required,
lattice arches were erected, and shotcreted
in place. A three-boom semi-automatic
Rocket Boomer L3 C performed the sup-
port drilling duties at the north end, in
addition to blasthole drilling.
Drilling of a full round of approximately
130 x 2 m-deep holes in the top heading
took an hour, in addition to a half-hour
for charging and blasting. Blasting agents
were dynamite and cartridged slurry, with
19 intervals of electronic detonators with
millisecond delays at 80 milliseconds per
step.
The drilling rounds were set up using an
array of seven lasers to establish a perfect
profile.
Steinhaus at Semmering
The Steinhaus tunnel is on the B306
Vienna to Bruck road, which passes
through Semmering, a favourite skiing
resort for the Viennese. The B306 is being
upgraded, and will form part of the new S6
highway. This will connect with the St
Michael interchange on the section of the
A9 Trans-European Highway between the
main centres of Graz and Linz.
The tunnel is twin-tube and 1.5 km-
long, on a double curving alignment that
takes it into the side of the valley in which
the village of Steinhaus is located. It was
constructed by Bilfinger Berger for the
Austrian highways authority.
The rock quality is variable, generally
soft and non-glaciated, comprising chalk,
phyllite, calcite and quartzite, with a maxi-
mum cover of 60 m.
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The tunnels accommodate a two-lane

highway in each direction. There are three
cross-passages, with the middle one having
a large cross-section to facilitate the
switching of trucks between tubes in
emergency.
The full 80 sq m section of each main
drive was achieved with top heading,
bench and invert excavations. The faces
passed beneath some village houses with
around 50 m cover, and two blast vibration
monitoring stations were set up.
Work at Steinhaus commenced at the
west portal with a 47 m-long central pilot
tunnel, within which the pillar between the
two main tubes was cast using self-
compacting concrete. The separation over
the first 50 m of alignment was 2 to 4 m,
increasing progressively to 60 m at the
halfway mark. The rock pillar on the
second 50 m of drive was anchored using
pre-stressed bolts, tightened by plates on
both sides.
The drillrig fleet comprised three late-
series Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer 352s, of 51 mm x 8 m-long R32 pipe installed at Breakthrough is celebrated at
and one newer Rocket Boomer L2 C. They 2 m increments. Steinhaus.
spent 80% of their time drilling for rock Once into more competent ground, the
reinforcement because, generally speaking, drillrigs were able to deliver 80-90
only 10-20 blast-holes were required in the holes/round in the top headings, drilled
faces of the top headings. to depths of 1.5-1.7 m. Blasting was by
The faces, which were mechanically millisecond and long delay non-electric
excavated, were secured by up to nine detonators and encapsulated slurry main
16 ft-long self drilling anchors with mortar charge.
injection. Roof and side support was The bench followed at between 90 m
achieved mainly with grouted rebars and and 220 m behind the face, where the tem-
self drilling rockbolts from Atlas Copco porary invert was ripped out by an excava-
MAI, and five MAI M400 water mixing tor with hydraulic hammer.
pumps were used for grouting. A concrete pump was stationed at each
In order to maintain reasonable under- bench as a convenient way of pumping
foot conditions, a temporary shotcrete shotcrete past the ramp position, from
invert reinforced with steel mesh was laid where a mixer truck transported it to the
in the top headings, every 4 or 5 arches on face jumbo.
advance. Drainage holes were drilled in the Self drilling rockbolts have become
face whenever necessary. Usually, three or very popular in recent years, and are now
four arches were set at 1.5 m intervals in used in a number of different applications,
each face during a 24 h cycle of three for both surface and underground drilling.
shifts. In tunnels, their primary use is for advance
At the 90 m mark on the south drive, a support of extremely friable rock, or in for-
20 m-high quartzite runner was encoun- mations where the drill hole will collapse
tered, which, fortunately for the tunnellers, before a normal rockbolt can be put in
proved to be dry. The drillrig stood place.
away, drilling over the face and into the The bolt is made up of five essential
cavity. parts: a threaded bolt, a single-usage
Some 30 cu m of 8 mm concrete was drill bit, a connection casing, a screw plate
then pumped through the drillholes, using and a nut. The rockbolts are available
one of the shotcrete jumbos. Advance over in standard lengths, by the metre from
a 10 m stretch beneath the filled cavity was 2-6 m-long, with special customer-
protected by arches of 20-30 spiles made designed lengths of up to 12 m.

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Atlas Copco Rocket Boomer L3 C
drilling at the south bench at
Plabutsch.
Repeat Performance at
Plabutsch
The alignment of the first Plabutsch tunnel,
built in the early 1980s, is straight over
most of its length from the north portal,
turning through 90 degrees to exit in an
easterly direction at the south end, some
4 km from the airport. The tunnel has a
continuous gradient of 1%.
The new parallel tunnel was constructed
from both ends by a joint venture of Ostu
Stettin Leoben and Hinteregger Salzburg
over a period of four years Summer, 2003,
allowing two years for excavation, one
year for concreting, and one year for
equipment installation.
The new tunnel runs along the west side
of the existing tube at a spacing of 50 m,
Longitudinal profile and plan of the
Plabutsch tunnel.
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and is connected to it by pedestrian cross-
passages at 400 m intervals. Blasting
restrictions limited vibration could have
affected the traffic tunnel, and the maxi-
mum round allowable was 4 m.
Both ends were advanced as top head-
ings with 1.2-2.5 m following benches and
a drain at one metre below floor datum.
The top headings, when in sound rock,
were drilled with a pattern of 45 x 45 mm
holes using ballistic bits. Four Atlas
Copco drillrigs handled all of the drilling
requirements. These were multi-task
machines equipped with computer assisted
hole positioning and semi-automatic drilling
programmes.
At the south portals, some 700 m of cut
and cover constructed as part of the 1980
contract has been used as the west car-
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riageway exit from the natural tunnel. The
northbound traffic crossed over from the
bi-directional natural tunnel to the cut and
cover section at the portals to emerge in
the correct carriageway of the motorway.
This section of the original tunnel was
closed so that it could be utilized by con-
struction traffic for the duration of the
contract. Another 600 m of cut and cover
was constructed to connect the existing cut
and cover with the natural portal. This
extended cut-and-cover hides the highway
from the Schloss St Martin, an historic
castle which overlooks the site.
It took a total of ten umbrella-drilled
arches using an Atlas Copco 352 S to
establish the first 120 m of the south drive.
Drilling at the south face was then taken
over by a new Atlas Copco L3 C drillrig,
the first of two such machines ordered for
the Plabutsch contract. The L3 C is
equipped with automatic boom control and
achieved a smoother tunnel profile.
Blasting was by 18 separate timing
intervals of millisecond delays because of
their finer controllability. This resulted in
less vibration and gave a good profile.
Around 250 kg of dynamite was used to
backprime the holes, using 35 mm sticks
on the bulk charge and 20 mm sticks in the
contour holes. Stemming was not required
on these loading ratios because the holes
were little more than half-primed. Steel
arches were erected when required but, for
most of the time, a combination of Swellex
and rebar grouted bolts with mesh and
shotcrete was sufficient.
The north face ground was soft and fri-
able, and the main problem was to keep it
in place while supports were installed. An
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Installing 4 m-long Swellex rockbolts
from the Boomer basket at Plabutsch.
Atlas Copco 353 S Boomer drillrig was
utilised to install R32 threaded self-drilling
3 m-long extension rockbolts into the face.
A 15 m string took around 12 minutes to
install, and the completed unit was grouted
into place using a fast setting sand/cement
mix. Three such anchors were positioned
to stabilize the centre section of the face,
and a 5 m overlap was maintained. The
face was also lightly shotcreted as a further
precaution against spalling after each
round was cleared.
The top heading excavation was sup-
ported using 4 m-long Swellex bolts
immediately after blasting, and these were
expanded into full contact with the rock
using an onboard pump. The Swellex bolts
were installed just in time to stop the roof
peeling back, and were sometimes also
used in the face to secure hangings while
safety work was carried out.
Once the face was mucked out, another
eleven 6 m-long grouted rebar bolts were
set in the crown using bolting equipment
mounted on the Rocket Boomer basket.
The north end was advanced on a 90 sq m
section, with the first 600 m in dolomite.
The drive passed beneath the Thalgraben
valley at the 700 m point with just 12-15 m
ground cover, and then entered a difficult
geological section comprising schist, which
exhibited squeezing characteristics, and
steel lattice arches were erected as required
at intervals of 1.0 m, 1.3 m, and 1.7 m. ■
Acknowledgements
Atlas Copco is grateful to the contractors
for facilitating the site visits on which
these articles are based.
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