Experimental study of the effect of conditioning on abrasive wear and torque requirement of full face tunneling machines

• New testing system to examine the soil conditioning effect on tool wear of EPB TBMs.
• The procedure for performing the Penn State Soil Abrasion test has been introduced.
• The effect of torque, soil conditioning and tool wear have been reported.

One of the main operational parameters in pressurized full face soft ground tunneling with machines such as earth pressure balance (EPB) TBMs is soil conditioning. Soil conditioners which are proper foam or conditioning agents, are often injected through the cutterhead or into the cutting chamber to make the muck flowable, lower inner friction between the soil particles, control soil stickiness, prepare the excavated soil to be compressible during the tunneling operation, control the water inflow, reduce the torque on the cutterhead, and lower power and torque of the screw conveyor. Foams can also be used in hard rock tunneling to reduce the wear and torque to replace conventional dust suppression by water sprays. This paper reviews the common practice in soil conditioning and focuses on assessing the influence of the conditioning on tool wear and torque requirement of the machines. Tests performed on many standard type soils and few samples from soft ground tunneling projects around the US on Penn State Soil Abrasion testing device. The results of tests performed in dry, moist and conditioned soil will be discussed and compared in this paper. The preliminary results show that the use of proper soil conditioning can reduce the wear of cutters and machine components by orders of magnitude while it can reduce the torque by over 50%.