Sunday, November 17, 2013

A Guide To Construction Equipment For Projects

By Victor Kavlotsky


Different types of construction work call for different types of construction equipment for projects. Constructing a highway requires different plant from constructing a skyscraper. Building homes in California, which is prone to regular earthquakes, requires different tools from building homes in Oklahoma, Texas and other states in Tornado Alley. Still other approaches are needed for erecting residential neighborhoods along the Atlantic coast, which is vulnerable to hurricanes.

The Channel Tunnel, which connects the east coast of England to Calais on the northern coast of France, was completed in 1994. It is the longest undersea tunnel in the entire world. The 13,000 workers who built it took five years. Eleven tunnel boring machines were used. Their combined weight amounted to 12,000 metric tonnes, more than the entire Eiffel Tower.

The mass of mud, rock and other debris that was removed from the tunnel was placed at Shakespeare Cliff, near the Kent town of Dover. The land area of England grew by an additional 90 acres, or one-quarter the footprint of Regent's Park in Central London. The new town, called Samphire Hoe, was probably named in honor of the interesting green vegetable that thrives in the area. The tunnel is 31 miles in length; of this, 24 miles are situated under water.

The total length of tunnel bored by the 11 machines each day amounted to 250 feet, or two football fields worth. This volume of spoil equated to the volume of 13 times the volume of Wembley Stadium. There are people who believe the tunnel to be one of the modern world's seven wonders. This structure is really composed of three tunnels, one to carry trains each way between England and France and a third tunnel to enable repair and maintenance work to be carried out without disrupting passenger travel.

The trains that take passengers, cars and cargo are 775 meters in length. This is the equivalent of eight soccer fields. If every car that had ever traveled through the Channel Tunnel were placed end to end on top of each other, we would be able to climb them all the way to the Moon. This distance is equal to approximately 250,000 miles.

The number of people who have been through the tunnel since it opened in 1994 is equal to four times the entire population of the United Kingdom. At roughly 70 million people, this means that approximately 280 individuals have crossed the English Channel beneath the sea via the Channel Tunnel.

In 2004, one of the drills used to bore the tunnel was put up for sale. The drill weighed 580 tonnes and fetched a price of tens of thousands of dollars. The principal type of construction equipment for projects that was used to drill the Channel Tunnel were massive tunnel boring machines.




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