Exchanges and views
1 November 2022Come autumn, come the season of meetings and gatherings and intimate conversations, in huddles as days shorten and darker evenings return, and openly at large events that draw interest from across the industry.
This month, the giant Bauma trade fair once again takes place in Munich with much to offer visitors from the tunnelling and underground mining sectors to the displays of construction equipment and heavy plant and exhibitor stands.
Bauma also includes a support programme on topics of increasing importance and interest to industry: Construction Methods and Materials; Autonomous Machines; Mining and sustainability; Digital Construction; and, the hybrid and all-electric vehicles.
We are pleased to provide a show guide to Bauma 2022 inside this issue of Tunnels and Tunnelling.
This issue also looks to what new digitalisation technology is coming to offer the tunnelling industry, such as ways to use building information modelling (BIM) and which has been addressed by the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA) in its latest guide.
The publication has a focus on segmentally lined bored tunnels and was launched last month at the World Tunnel Congress (WTC), in Copenhagen.
Bored tunnels are also a spotlight for another feature in this issue, looking at possibilities for digitalisation to build master rings.
Exchanges of information are explored in another way, taking lessons from the design and construction of large air-cushion caverns for hydropower projects in Norway for underground storage of oil & gas. Such petroleum assets are important parts of energy infrastructure at the best of times but their strategic value will be points of discussion, if not debate, in an era of energy supply challenges in Europe even as society seeks a move toward low carbon sources.
Keeping with caverns, this issue also carries a BTS report on design and construction by sequential excavation of LA metro’s largest underground cavern.
