This project includes a long water transfer tunnel that links the states of Pahang and Selangor in Malaysia. The tunnel length is 44.6 km with diameter of 5.2 m and it constitutes one of the largest infrastructure projects in Asia. The completed project will aim to relieve the shortage of water supply for daily life and industries of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor State in the future by supplying approximately 1.89 million m3 of raw water per day to a new water treatment facility. Of the total 44.6 km tunnel length, 34.6 km was excavated by 3 sections of Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), 4 sections of total 9.1 km length by conventional tunnel excavation method (NATM) and one section of 0.9 km length by Cut and Cover Method. The highest overburden is 1,246 m and approximately 5,000 m of the tunnel has over 1,000 m overburden. During excavation of these areas, we encountered several geological incidents such as high rock temperature, heavy water ingress and rockburst.
In this paper we focus on the relationship between TBM operational parameters obtained from the instrumentation on the TBM and the geological conditions encountered, with particular emphasis on rockburst phenomenon.
