Guidance Systems

It is important to clarify, that there are two different ways for construction tunnels, pipe jacking and segmental linning. So there are two different systems of guidance as well, with great differences between both:

Curve pipe jacking tunnel

In pipe jacking, the movement of all the pipes during the construction of the tunnel implies that there are not fixed points where we could have fixed coordinates. So we will need a guidance system that could measure that displacement of coordinates to determine the position of the tunnel boring machine during the drilling of the curves.

For the pipe jacking technology Herrenknecht has developed the U.N.S. Universal Navigation System.

For the Segmental lining projects, the company VMT has developed the SLS-T guidance system.

Cutting Wheel microtunnelling machine AVN1600
Breakthrough in project with vertical curve