Pipe Driving and Heading
Supply and disposal lines for new developments as well as for renovation
work were constructed almost exclusively by open or semi-open trenching
methods up to the middle of the eighties. The disadvantages were for the
owners adjoining the projects who had to contend with a considerable degree
of noise and dirt nuisance, traffic diversions, settlement damage as well
as excavation and material storage.
These disadvantages can be almost completely done away with, with the method further developed by Trapp of underground full-section pipe driving. This method supersedes the traditional mining procedures and has many advantages for diameters up to DN 5000.
In the sphere of pipe driving Trapp have lead the development of technology. Apart from exact laser control, the system that Trapp developed to state-of-the-art included a new-type injection drilling procedure which can stabilise the bed rock when required. Over and above this, Trapp developed a separation plant which guarantees a largely enclosed cycle of the bentonite support liquid for the drill head and separates the quarried ground.
Pipelines are driven, laser-controlled from start pits up to the prepared target pits through any bed rock or ground. In addition to its considerably improved environmental viability, this procedure also results in cost reduction. Trapp have operated passable and non-passable driving for overt twenty years.
In this manner Trapp have developed economically and environmentally meaningful innovations for measuring and conveying technologies with large passable driving systems to state-of-the-art as well as undertaking considerable investments in the technology.
First examples of the application by Trapp of this technology in Germany were 1600m tube driving works in Bielefeld 1990-1991; 1210 m tube driving works in Leverkussen in 1991, 2600 m pipe driving works in Wuppertal in 1992 and 306 m tube driving works in Erkrath in 1992.