Assessment of ground conditions with respect to mechanised tunnelling for the construction of the extension of the Athens Metro to the city of Piraeus

This paper refers to the proposed western extension of the Athens Metro to Piraeus city. The railway consists of a 9.45 m diameter, 8.2 km long tunnel and seven stations. Tunnelling works are expected to be undertaken within a variety of lithological formations ranging from very strong alpine limestones to recent soft littoral deposits. The tunnel alignment was divided into 12 areas with respect to the geological and geotechnical conditions that may be encountered during construction. In many of these zones, the geotechnical conditions together with the presence of sensitive surface and/or subsurface structures led to the selection of a closed-face TBM (Earth Pressure Balance Machine or Slurry Tunnel Boring Machine) as the appropriate tunnelling technique. The Piraeus extension is a project where in places both types of commonly used closed-face tunnelling machines will encounter ‘text book’ application areas, but not always. The applicability of each type of TBM is discussed using the available data obtained from an extensive site investigation.