Talk:Tunnel boring machine

Vocabulary
I redirected "bore tunnel" and "deep bore tunnel" here; they should be explained if not obvious. -- Beland (talk) 05:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Urban myth on TBMs
User:72.151.7.53 previously inserted this uncited non-encyclopedic paragraph into the article, which I've removed and copied here for future reference:
 * Nuclear Powered Tunnel Boring Machines Debunked by Los Alamos National Lab
 * Mr. Easley, No such device was ever built. Los Alamos National Laboratory receives a small number of inquiries every year about the use of a “nuclear powered tunnel boring machine” that was supposedly used to dig a tunnel between Los Alamos and Dulce, N.M., however, no such machine exists nor does any tunnel between Los Alamos and Dulce. Kevin Roark LANL Communications Office
 * Mr. Roark: I'm writing you to put to rest reports that a Los Alamos National Laboratory/U.S .Atomic Energy Commission Patent for a nuclear powered tunnel boring machine (referenced below) was built and used to construct secret deep underground military bases. It is our understanding that such a device, although patented, was never built. Could you please confirm this and eloborate on the subject. Terry Easley

"Tunnel boring machine" or "tunnel-boring machine"? Possible improper English.
I recommend that "tunnel-boring machine" (with the dash) is the proper way in addressing the name of the tool as well as being the name of the article. Why? When you say "tunnel boring machine" (without the dash), it might sound like a tunnel making a hole in the machine. 210.4.121.165 (talk) 00:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It is definitely bad English to omit the hyphen. "Tunnel-boring" is a phrasal adjective.  The hyphen in a phrasal adjective changes the meaning, sometimes drastically.  I stole this list from an excellent blog post that explains how phrasal adjectives should be treated:
 * high school kids vs. high-school kids (school kids on pot, or kids in high school)
 * one armed bandit vs. one-armed bandit (an armed bandit alone, or a bandit with one arm)
 * criminal law professors vs. criminal-law professors
 * small animal veterinarian vs. small-animal veterinarian
 * old boat dealer vs. old-boat dealer
 * bad weather report vs. bad-weather report
 * big business owner vs. big-business owner


 * A hyphen should be added in every instance, including the article's title. 2601:281:CC80:5AE0:6C61:A3D5:53F0:BC31 (talk) 15:27, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Military usage
Please help me with sources for the following section. I wrote it according to personal knowledge. I had written a letter to Ariel Sharon as a 17 year old in 1981, after hearing a lecture about the Suez canal tunnel. (I received a personal reply to each of my points, saying that in his opinion even 5 years of ceasefire were worth not having a war (this was a year before the opening of the Lebanon war). Two years later as a young soldier, I was part of the construction crew at the IDF exhibit, and was at the (publicly televised) opening ceremony where Sharon spoke.

Since then I have followed with interest the development of tunnels in Israel. So here's what I wrote:

-- Military uses --

--- Middle East ---

In 1981 Egypt bought a tunnel boring machine from the German Herrenknecht company, and dug a tunnel under the Suez Canal. This was claimed to be a military breach against the almost completed peace treaty, with Israel ceding the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Opposition continued to claim it would be used for rapid transport of heavy military equipment. These machines were later donated to the PLO who dug bunkers in the Beaufort Castle in Lebanon. A specially devised Tunnel Busting Bomb was developed to damage these bunkers, but in the aftermath were discovered as non damaging.

During the [Operation Peace For Galilee]] In 1982, the IDF captured these machines, which were shown at a military exhibit a year later in Tel Aviv. Ariel Sharon, then minister of defence, declared Israel would use these machines for civilian use. Subsequently the tunnels of Highway 60 to Gush Etzion, two tunnels in Jerusalem, four tunnels of the new high speed railway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem have been built with these machines, as well as the new US underground base near Rosh Haain. .

-references-

This is just so you can read my proposal...

Thanks, Moshe פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 15:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Moshe. This story is interesting and no doubt could find a place somewhere on WP, assuming you or someone else does come up with better references (the informal ones you've given obviously don't meet WP:RS standards, but then I suspect you knew that or you wouldn't have asked for help finding others). However, I'm not sure it belongs in this article, for several reasons. One reason is because this article is really about TBM themselves and the varieties they come in, and less about their specific uses, and the section you've written breaks with that tradition. The second reason -- it's more of a concern, really -- is that the content of your proposed section touches a little bit on Israel-Arab relations, and it's been my experience editing WP that anything that touches that can of worms becomes corrupted by it, as there are many single-issue editors on both sides that will argue ad nauseum about the neutrality of passages that no uninvolved third party could possibly find fault with.


 * As an example of this phenomenon, consider this sentence: "This was claimed to be a military breach against the almost completed peace treaty, with Israel ceding the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt." Seems innocent, right? Except the use of the passive voice (probably unintentionally on your part) obscures who claims this, and people who disagree that it was a military breach will ream you for it, insisting that you say exactly who claims this, implying that whoever it was was not notable, that their claims are specious, etc. Then there's the WP:CLAIM issue with the use of the verb claims -- and the other side, the people who agree that it was a military breach -- will jump on you for suggesting obliquely that you're pushing the POV that it wasn't a military breach. Suddenly you have one side calling you anti-Arab and the other side calling you anti-Semitic and each editor goes off and tells all his friends and they show up and we have endless Israel/Palestine edit warring in an article about Tunnel Boring Machines.


 * And that's just that sentence. What about the following one? "Opposition continued to claim it would be used for rapid transport of heavy military equipment." Again, WP:CLAIM. Again, who is the opposition? And the bit that follows about the donation to the PLO would probably be contested, because every time an Israeli editor claims something about the PLO that's not nice people crawl out of the woodwork to cause a ruckus, just like every time a Palestinian or a Palestinian supporter says something about Israel that's not nice a whole brigade of pro-Israeli editors show up.


 * I guess what I'm saying is, perhaps this bit should be made its own article, one specifically about the incident. There are a lot of probably important details being left out: who donated them to the PLO? When did they build the bunkers? Where were they? When did the IDF try to bust them?


 * The possibility for edit warring aside, these details will be added by others and before you know it the section will be big enough to be its own article. Why not just write the article, and then link to it from here, perhaps as a See Also?


 * However, don't misunderstand me. I'm don't care enough about this to stop you from doing it if you really want to. Just remember, when it comes to Israel/Palestine stuff: sources, sources, sources, never use the passive voice, and write in very neutral language. This should be true of all WP articles of course but far fewer people are edit warring about TBMs than Israel/Palestine. Take care, Eniagrom (talk) 20:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Martina
Are you sure that the largest diameter hard rock TBS was manufactured by The Robbins Company for Canada's Niagara Tunnel Project? It is only 14.4 mt diameter, whereas Martina, by the German company Herrenknecht and the Italian company CMA has a diameter of 15,62 mt. See The world's largest hard rock cutter: Herrenknecht TBM S-574 "Martina" 07/22/2011. --Dejudicibus (talk) 14:47, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, the orlovski project was cancelled(http://lands-sale.com/real_estate/St_Petersburg_authorities_canceled_the_construction_42079), the biggest TBM in the world actually made is the Hitachi Zosen machine in Seattle at 17.45m diameter. (http://tunnelbuilder.com/News/SR-99-TBM-docks-in-Seattle.aspx) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.157.115.225 (talk) 21:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Seattle TBM
Added a reference to the new TBM being used in Seattle, which many sources claim to be "the world's largest." However, it's not clear in which category that might be true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.76.32.40 (talk) 00:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Tunnelling by nuclear fission heat
Uranium's average concentration in the Earth's crust is 2 to 4 parts per million by weight with 0.7% fissile isotope U235. This works out to 21 ppb. When U235 is bombarded with neutrons, heat is liberated heating the surrounding mass and additionally three more neutrons produced for aiding the nuclear reaction. This technique can be used in hard rock tunnel boring to increase the pace of boring and decrease power consumption drastically. The boring machine head can be fitted with low concentration uranium / uranium ore with neutron gun/generator. Every neutron hitting the U235 in uranium ore generate 3 neutrons which would be directed towards the hard rock to be excavated. When these neutrons hit the U235 (21 ppb present in the rock) they liberate heat locally inside the rock and create cracks due to thermal stress making the rock easier to break with hammers / cutters. The nuclear reaction further generates additional neutrons in the rock which would reduce the external supplementation of neutrons.

Thus generating neutrons externally and directing in to the rock material will achieve rock cutting which may be better and faster method. May respond. 49.204.214.236 (talk) 16:13, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Speed
I'm sure that it varies a lot depending the material being bored and the machine itself, but—how fast do these things go? Is it meters per day, tens of meters, hundreds of meters, etc? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.242.120.187 (talk) 23:31, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

19.25 m TBM
I'm sorry, but the TBM was NOT build, it was only designed, but the Orlovski tunnel was canceled (hope, temporarily), so the order to the TBM was canceled with the tunnel. Two 4-laned tunnels in 4th ring in Moscow were canceled too, so we have no project for the TBM now, maybe we will order it in a future, but we have many big transport projects in Moscow and St. Petersburg now, so we will have no money for the big tunnels in some next years. Of course, everything can change, but our present government don't look like people, who will start so expensive projects with so small profit for our highway system. Anyway, there is a fact, that the TBM wasn't build, it was only designed !!!

Please, correct the information, who is a native speaker of English - i don't want to correct the article with my mistakes.

PS if you have some questions about Moscow's tunnel projects, write me here, i'll visit the page in a near future and answer them. 78.24.28.186 (talk) 12:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I was going to fix this earlier, but I couldn't find any sources that say the tunnel was cancelled. I also couldn't find any that said the TBM had been built. Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I can find and post here some information about the tunnels and TBM in Russian language, if you want (there were 2 other projects for the TBM in Moscow). I'm not sure, there are many information in English, because official information of Russian projects posts by Russian government in Russian, and usually it posts on governmental sites, which can be found only when you know where to look for them :(78.24.28.186 (talk) 16:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Does the sentence I added to the end of "Soft ground TBMs" look right? If there is a source in Russian, that is better than no source. Can you add it? Or post it here and I'll add it. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:20, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * the orlovski project was cancelled(http://lands-sale.com/real_estate/St_Petersburg_authorities_canceled_the_construction_42079), — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.157.111.67 (talk) 22:09, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

History ?
The tunnel-boring machines that are shown and discussed in this article employ a cutting head that consists of cutting wheels that are mounted in a rotating face plate. However, the "History" section mentions only old machines that employed batteries of pneumatic drills. The "History" section should be updated to include the origin of the modern TBM. I'll try to do some research on the subject. VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 07:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:CITESPAM removed
I have removed the excessive usage of one group of authors/publications, that has been cite bombed in a thinly-veiled attempt to popularize these publications. Most of the added content was full of vague commonplaces and violated WP:NOTGUIDE - Wikipedia is not supposed to provide a "how to tunnel" handbook, or a platform to promote own views and research. GermanJoe (talk) 10:16, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

What is the power source?
These machines undoubtably require a lot of power, and the article is not complete until it addresses that aspect of the technology.

I assume most of the 19th-century machines were powered by coal-fired steam engines. Do modern machines use diesel engines? Here on the Talk page, the rumor of a nuclear-powered machine has been dealt with. Still, it would be interesting if the article touched on the feasibility of a nuclear-powered TBM. 2601:281:CC80:5AE0:6C61:A3D5:53F0:BC31 (talk) 15:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Micro tunnel shield method
Insufficient content  for  a stand alone article and unsourced Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support merge - I also support this merge. I read the article and see that it would be more appropriate as a subsection. Barbara ✐ ✉  09:17, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Support- The present main article is poor and needs considerable development, and at that stage consideration can be given whether it should be split to accommodate different technologies. There is certainly a difference between the machines used to create large rail or road tunnels and those for a small bore tunnel for services or sewerage, but at present that can be accommodated by the creation of a section within this main article. Nothing is gained by the present division. AJHingston (talk) 14:04, 18 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Support - Micro tunnel shield method is unsourced and tiny. Can be merged into new section easily. Acalycine (talk) 00:48, 26 May 2018 (UTC)