On April 8, builders of the Qingyan Tunnel project on the Shiwu North Expressway celebrated the smooth breakthrough of the tunnel.
With a "boom" of blasting, a glimmer of light appeared in the pitch-black tunnel. At 2,580 meters from the entrance, the breakthrough deviation did not exceed 2 centimeters... At around 10 a.m. on April 8, the Qingyan Tunnel of the Shiwu North Expressway in Shimen Village, Wufeng Township, Yunyang District, Shiyan City, was holed through. Construction teams of hundreds of people from both sides met in victory, cheering and jubilant.
Inside the tunnel it was hot, humid and mixed with the smell of dust, with gravel underfoot and construction vehicles constantly passing in and out. Outside, surrounded by sheer cliffs, the "skeleton" of the expressway with its forest of high piers stretches across the Qinba Mountains. "It was not easy to bore through this extra-long tunnel in just two years," said Yang Yan, Party Secretary of Hubei Jiaotou Yunchen Construction Company.
The Shiwu North Expressway (Yunxi to Baoxia section), invested in and built by Hubei Communications Investment Group, is the "Vertical Line 8" of the province's "nine vertical, five horizontal and four ring" expressway network. The project is 34.8 kilometers long with a total investment of about 7.45 billion yuan. The Qingyan Tunnel is a controlling project of the Shiwu North Expressway, with a total length of 4,995 meters, making it the longest tunnel on the entire line.
"The toughest nut to crack was the Class V surrounding rock," recalled Lu Wenke, Party branch secretary of the project of CCCC Second Highway Engineering Co., Ltd. Class V surrounding rock is most prone to "changing face"; after excavation it cannot be supported and fixed, like "sticking chopsticks into tofu." Crossing fault zones, weak surrounding rock and unfavorable geology became synonymous with this tunnel.
April 8, construction site of the Shiwu North Expressway.
A support installation marvel was introduced, with technology empowering the clearing of bottlenecks. A Hubei Daily all-media reporter saw a 24-meter-long giant with "three heads and six arms" "crouching" at the tunnel entrance. This is the arch frame installation trolley, used for the first time on an expressway construction site in Hubei. Lu Wenke explained that tunnel support is a key step. With this marvel, work that previously took 16 workers 4 hours now takes only 4 workers 40 minutes, while also reducing safety risks.
The marvels of "replacing people with machinery and reducing people with intelligence" do not stop there. The project introduced a full set of automated processing equipment to improve the precision of component fabrication, and adopted measures such as innovative connecting plate matchers, improved crown distribution methods, and a hinged end-plate positioning waterstop process to strengthen quality control. At the same time, by strengthening the connection of construction procedures and using a hydraulic trestle for integral installation of steel arch frames, continuous operation at the working face was achieved, ensuring synchronous execution of cross-operation procedures, effectively compressing construction time and helping this ultra-long tunnel break through 3 months ahead of schedule.
Hardcore technology also includes an invisible net. When Wang Xinyu, head of the project's safety department, entered the Qingyan Tunnel, he wore a red smart safety helmet with a camera containing a chip, wirelessly connected to the back end through a BeiDou satellite positioning device. With this invisible net over the ultra-long tunnel, back-end personnel can see the construction site at a glance. This is only part of the intelligent monitoring platform of Hubei Jiaotou Yunchen Construction Company. The entire platform has subsystems such as video monitoring, safety hazard rectification and special equipment management, using technologies such as digital twins to "catch" safety and make the construction site "smarter."
"Scientific and technological innovation has accelerated and improved the efficiency of project construction, and we are confident of completing it within the year," Yang Yan said. The Shiwu North Expressway has so far completed an accumulated investment of 5.8 billion yuan, accounting for 77% of the total investment. The project's subgrade earth and rock works, culverts and passages, bridge pile foundations and pier column works have all been completed. Once built, a new major corridor will be added to the border area of Hubei, Henan, Shaanxi and Chongqing.
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