CORRELATIONS BETWEEN TBM PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS IN HARD ROCK

Tiumelling by the full face mechanical excavation with several kinds of TBM is activated worldwide on account of the high level of its tunnelling speed. TBM tunnelling market is also growing in Korea because of continuously increasing need of infrastructures and mountainous topography. Norway has been at the leading edge of TBM tunnelling technologies from many tunnelling activities on account of the glacier topography. This study is to evaluate the progress of IBM performance in Korean and Norwegian tunnels, and analyze the data of its parameters such as advance rate, net penetration rate and machine utilization. The increase of TBM diameter cannot be found during last three decades, but that of cutter size from 14 " to 17, 19 " or even 21 " which enables to provide a higher thrust to improve the depth of penetration directly has been achieved. The relationship between net penetration rate and machine utilization seems to have the trend of reciprocal proportion in the extremely hard rock in spite that they are basically independent of each other. The advance rate is nearly independent of machine utilization from the analysis of actual performance data even if both parameters are proportional in the relational equation. The advance rate is dependent on net penetration rate very much from the analysis of data in tunnels. But their weekly average data do not have a clear trend in each tunnel. It is intended that the presented data would contribute to the effective performance of TBM in order to reduce time and cost for future tunnelling projects.