With construction of tunnel projects in China in
recent years, the level of research, design, and manufacturing of boring
machines has been improved greatly. The current status of independent design
and manufacturing technologies in China is summarized on the basis of typical
applications of Chinamade boring machines. The
technologies are quite mature for three main types of tunnel boring machines,
including the earth pressure balance shield machine, the slurry shield machine
and the hard rock tunnel boring machine. The key technologies of noncircular fullface tunnel boring machine,
such as the horseshoeshaped shield machine and the
rectangular shield machine, have reached the international leading level.
Meanwhile the shaft boring machines began to be applied in the projects. The
key problems in the development and manufacturing of boring machines in China
are analyzed as follows. （1） The information security is increasingly prominent as the design software is
provided by foreign companies. （2） The main bearing, gear reducer, and other key parts of tunnel
boring machine need to be imported. （3） It′s challenging for innovative products to
break through the current market. Based on the current technical level and
market status, intelligentization and diversification are considered to be the
focus and trend of boring machine technology in the future. A variety of new
model design concepts are put forward in this paper, such as multifunction and multimode tunnel boring
machine, noncircular hard rock tunnel boring machine,
tunnel boring machine coupled with other rock breaking methods, and partialface tunnel boring machine, which are expected to promote the
technical innovation of tunnel boring machines in China.
LI Jianbin
. Current Status, Problems and Prospects of Research,
Design, and Manufacturing of Boring Machine in China[J]. Tunnel Construction, 2021
, 41(6)
: 877
-896
.
DOI: 10.3973/j.issn.2096-4498.2021.06.001
