Squeezing Ground Conditions in Rishikesh-Karnaprayag Railway Tunnel Project

Mohammad Forooghi, Vishal Bansal, Majid Tajik, Soner Batuman & Pranshu Aggarwal at Turkish Engineering Consulting & Contracting -TUMAS India, and Sumit Jain, Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, present evaluations, considerations, and exploration of various approaches for assessing squeezing ground conditions in the rock tunnelling of Rishikesh to Karnaprayag railway project in the Himalayas.

Picture courtesy: Herrenknecht

The new railway line between Rishikesh and Karnaprayag is under construction in the State of Uttarakhand, India, with a total length of 125km. Package 4 of the project includes 10.490km (twin bore TBM tunnel, upline downline) being constructed using two 9.11m diameter single shield hard rock TBMs. Rock masses such as shale, slate, phyllite and schist, and the rock mass of weakness/fault zones are incapable of sustaining high stresses in such high overburdened tunnels which leads to squeezing ground conditions during tunnel construction in the tectonically active Himalayan region.

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