ALE successfully installs 85m long tunnel segment using eight 500te strand-jacks, four 500te climbing-jacks and four 10te hydraulic winches.
The tunnel segment, in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, was built in a temporary dry dock next to the channel. The installation will create a split level crossing by small river within the channel.
The front and rear of the segment was closed using a steel plated structure allowing sufficient buoyancy for the floating operation.
ALE installed the four climbing-jacks on pistons that were later fine-tuned as the floating segment was lowered using four hydraulic winches with a capacity of 10te each. Two hydraulic winches were installed on the dry dock side for braking and controlling the operation.
After slowly positioning the segment between the sheet pile walls on which ALE’s temporary lowering construction was positioned, eight strand-jacks were connected to the segment.
The segment was connected to the stand-jacks, while the temporaty wall on top was flooded and removed to decrease buoyancy.
During operations, Rhein-Herne channel was closed to all ship traffic and was re-opened again after a minimum amount of 56 hours.
