The West Gate Tunnel project in Melbourne is much more than a tunnel.
The project will deliver a vital alternative to the West Gate Bridge in Victoria, providing a much needed second river crossing to Melbourne’s business district, quicker and safer journeys and remove thousands of trucks from residential streets.
Launched in 2018 for a period of 5 years, it includes the construction of new twin tunnels, an elevated concrete roadway and several steel bridges.
For the substructure of the concrete elevated roadway and the steel bridges…
Our teams have managed so far the erection by crane of 128 precast piers out of a total of 220+. Stressing and grouting of Freyssibar+ post-tensioning system for the piers are currently ongoing. The transfer to permanent bearings was started in the middle of December 2021. Concrete segments continue to arrive and new columns and piers are continually being installed. The elevated road is really beginning to take shape and it is now easy to imagine how it will look when completed.
For the superstructure …
We are managing the erection of 91 concrete box girder spans, which are typically 45m long, 13.2m wide, made from 17 segments and weighing up to 1,320t! 7 spans are now erected, and our teams have already reached the target cycle time for the installation of each span.
All spans are erected using the span-by-span method, most of them with an overhead launching gantry, the remaining ones on falsework. They are designed with external PT tendons which allows dry-joints between match-cast segments for majority of the spans.
Two more challenging and exciting years lie ahead for our teams at Freyssinet International and Freyssinet Australia before completion of this huge project !
Watch this self-explanatory video of the span-by-span erection method and our custom designed launching gantry:
