Longest Curved Microtunnel Drive Completed in North America

By TBM News December 12, 2017

Ward & Burke recently completed a 2,722 ft curved drive in Cleveland.

Ward & Burke Tunneling Inc. recently holed through on the first of two drives for the Kingsbury Run Culvert Repair project in Cleveland, Ohio. The curved drive spanned 2,722 ft, making it the largest curved drive completed in North America to date.

This $9.9 million project for the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) includes the installation of 3,461 ft of 60-in. reinforced concrete microtunnel pipe, sealed shafts, reinforced in-situ concrete manholes, and tie-ins to connections on upstream and downstream sides of project.

Value engineering resulted in the final microtunnel drive length, which had multiple horizontal curve components, including one curve radius of 787 ft. Crews used a Herrenknecht AVN 1500 for micrtotunneling. AECOM is the engineer.

MTBM was launched on Nov. 1 and recovered on Dec. 5. The drive is among the longest microtunnels – curved or straight – completed in North America. The Elgin Mills project in Canada, completed by Ward & Burke in 2013, had been the continent’s longest curved drive at 2,427 ft. The longest drive overall was 3,000 ft, completed by Kiewit in Portland, Oregon, in 2008.