Trade Journals for the Concrete Industry

Complex infrastructure work is currently being carried out underground in the city state of Singapore. The city’s population has risen rapidly from 173,000 inhabitants in 1881 to 5.6 million in 2014. In 1987, a metro network with 6 km of track was commissioned; this had been expanded to 112 km in 2014. 55 % of the inhabitants use Singapore’s public passenger transport on a daily basis so that the billions of dollars spent on this ambitious infrastructure project have been invested efficiently. To draw a comparison, in Germany only approximately 8% of the population above the age of 14 years made use of trains or buses in 2013. Singapore’s government has recently published the ambitious target of 75% utilisation in their master plan for the year 2030. Expanding the metro tunnels by a further 170 kilometres is a major component of this master plan. Singapore’s geology lends to driving tunnels almost exclusively with the pipe jacking procedure using tunnel boring machines (TBM). To this end, more than 35 TBMs with a diameter of approximately 6 m are permanently in operation. The lining segments have been manufactured in part using a concreting method with steel fibres. This article will report on innovative test portals for verifying the strength of fibre concrete and fibre reinforced sprayed concrete.