Swissloop Tunneling, a multicultural team of students from ETH Zürich and other universities, has won the Innovation & Design Award at Elon Musk's 'Not a Boring Competition'.

Swissloop Tunneling was one of the only two teams who made it to the final in the competition out of the initial more than 400 teams. Swissloop Tunneling TBM bored 18 meters and lost the final to the German team 'TU Munich' though none of the teams managed to bore the full length of 30 meters.

'In Place' Tunnel Lining

Despite loosing the final and finishing second, Swissloop Tunneling team has been awarded the Innovation and Design Award mainly for their innovative way of `segmenting' the tunnel their TBM 'Groundhog Alpha' bores. The Swiss team's TBM uses "3D printing" mechanism to create the lining "in place". The innovative mechanism a special polymer 3D-printer built into the machine. Using tough glass fibre lamellas and a two-component polymer mix, it is possible to create a 15mm thick and highly reliable tunnel wall to ensure structural integrity along the whole length of the tunnel. The lining hardens so fast that, the TBM's two hydraulic grippers can safely press against the newly created lining to push the TBM forward'.

Prepared for any soil conditions

Their tunneling machine called 'Groundhog Alpha' has a diameter of 0.56m with a length of 7 meters and a weight of 2,5 tons. It uses an erosion system that cuts out large stones using the custom-designed cutting wheel. Subsequently, it crushes those stones to smaller sizes (1-2 centimeters) using the cone crusher. The tungsten-carbide coating ensures longevity and enables the crusher to get a better grip. In the last step, all the slurry is washed out of the erosion chamber using 10bar water pressure and a Venturi vacuum pump which can be found in the back of the machine. With a torque of 8.5kNm, a rotation speed of 27 rpm and a pushing force of 100kN Swissloop Tunneling is prepared for any soil conditions that could come Groundhog Alpha’s way.

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2021/09/eth-students-place-second-in-tunneling-competition.html

The multicultural Swiss team:

https://swisslooptunneling.ch/team