Breakthrough in Ibbenbüren
Another milestone has been reached in the construction of the Ibbenbüren mine water tunnel: after 3,867 metres and 2,959 segment rings built, tunnel boring machine ‘Tisa’ reached the target cavern at shaft 1 on the former mine site of RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Ibbenbüren division, at 2:20 pm on 24 February 2025.
A team from the Tunnel Ibbenbüren consortium completed this challenging task of excavating the east side of the ‘Deina’ tunnel around the clock in continuous operation.
Since the start of the sister machine ‘Barbara’ for the west excavation of the ‘Miriam’ tunnel on 7 December 2022, a total of 5,444 segment rings with 6 stones each and an inner diameter of 3,600 mm have been installed over a total of 7,108 metres.
During the excavation, man and machine overcame a wide variety of challenges, such as the changing geological and hydrogeological nature of the rock in a subsoil characterised by mining, working in very confined conditions and under high technical requirements.
The Tunnel Ibbenbüren consortium and the parent companies of the partners Wayss & Freytag Ingenieurbau AG and Ed. Züblin AG are delighted to have reached this milestone.
This will be followed in the coming weeks by the dismantling of the tunnelling equipment and the clearance of the tunnelling facilities on the construction site in order to start the subsequent work on the eastern tunnel lining with prefabricated channel elements.
