Excavation materials handling in the Loetschberg Base Tunnel using Decision Aids for Tunneling (DAT)

Abstract

A major problem in tunneling is that most decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. A significant contribution to help with such decisions was the development of the Decision Aids for Tunneling (DAT). The DAT are based on probabilistic analysis and allow the user to quantify uncertainties by mathematical modeling. Although the DAT have been used for many major tunnel projects they have never been used to simulate the resources management of an actual project. Therefore the Southern Part of the Loetschberg Base tunnel, which complex tunnel network, consisting of seven different tunnels, approximately was selected in order to apply the resources model of the DAT. is in fact a 40 Km long Many different simulation scenarios were run which prove that taking into account an additional factor, which in this case is the excavated materials, during planning may lead to quite different decisions. The results of the materials management simulations can contribute to the design of a tunnel project through optimization of the tunnel operations.