Rail tunnel enlargement strategies in South Korea

초록

Little attention appears to have been paid to the art of tunnelling aiming to increase the cross-sectional are of the existing rail tunnels because of the difficulties involved if the tunnels ought to be kept at least partially functional during the enlargement operation. There is a necessity arisen recently of accommodating the double stack train in a conventional line linking two largest cities of Seoul and Busan in South Korea, i.e. Gyeongbu conventional line. This paper presents some findings obtained in the process of developing strategies for having the cross-sectional areas of these tunnels in the line to be increased without causing major train disruption.