- Bosporus aqueduct
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- For the Bosporus railway tunnel, see Marmaray.
The Bosporus aqueduct – an important project (both in terms of size and technical challenges) – is being undertaken in Istanbul, one of the world's largest cities. With a population of about 15 million, Istanbul is trying to secure its citizens' access to drinking water. While this alone is a difficult task, the city's location (on two separate continents, Europe and Asia) makes the matter even more difficult. Most clean water in Turkey (and, consequently, Istanbul) is located on the Asian borders of the country. Therefore it is difficult to bring water to Istanbul's Asian side with hundreds of kilometres of pipelines, and another challenge to bring water to the European side of Istanbul with a tunnel dug 85 metres under the sea bed (145 metres under the sea surface) atop an active earthquake fault line. When finished, it will be the first tunnel connecting two continents. There is a large railway project which will connect both sides of Istanbul as well, but it will be through submerged tubes placed on the sea bed and not by tunnelling.[1]
The project is called the Melen Water Supply Project Bosporus Tunnel Crossing, and is being constructed by an international consortium of Russian and Turkish companies – Mosmetrostroy, ALKE and STFA. The value of the project is approximately US$128 million. The Melen Water Supply Project is funded mainly by JBIC (Japanese Bank for International Cooperation) and partly by DSI (State Hydraulic Works), and is going to be finished by mid 2010. When finished, the pipeline will carry 1,190,000,000 m3 of water annually to the European side of Istanbul.[2]
There are two phases to the project, the underwater-tunnel phase and the land-tunnel phase. The underwater phase is done by the TBM (tunnel boring machine) method, and the land part is done with blasting. The TBM-drilling part of the project is complete as of March 2009 and a ceremony was held, with the attendance of ministers, bureaucrats, Russian diplomats and Kadir Topbaş, the mayor of Istanbul. The TBM is specially designed and constructed for this project by the German firm Herrenknecht, and is six metres in diameter. The average advancing speed of the TBM during the project was 7.4 meters per day, with a maximum speed of 20.4 metres per day. After the tunneling works are finished, the tunnel is being lined by prefabricated concrete segments, after which come nine-metre-long steel pipes with an inside diameter of four metres.[3]
See also
References
Categories:- Aqueducts
- Buildings and structures in Istanbul
- Undersea tunnels
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