WORLDWIDE HYDRO

WORLDWIDE HYDRO

Swellex in Large Hydroelectric

Projects
Construction Reliability
International consultants are increasingly specifying Swellex in their
designs for hydro projects, because
of the need for absolute controllability of installation. Unlike railway and
highway tunnels, hydro tunnels are
not easy to inspect, so there has to
be a greater emphasis on reliability
of construction methods and materials. The fact that projects can be
designed in one country for construction in another, using materials from
a variety of sources, can be a cause
of great concern to both the hydro
tunnel designer and his client. Using
Swellex as the specified support
system reassures both parties that
the quality, flexibility and reliability
factors are fully covered.

Project: San Roque on Agno River, 345 MW.

Location: Philippines.
Excavation method: Drill/blast.
Contractor: Raytheon Ebasco Overseas Limited.
Designer: Golder Associates.
Rock: Mainly volcanic tuff.
Rock reinforcement requirement: Quality control, capacity to
work in soft and weak rock.
Rockbolt selected: Super Swellex.

Removing the Bottleneck at

San Roque
US contractor Raytheon Ebasco Overseas
Ltd. (REOL) was responsible for the San
Roque dam project on the River Agno in
the Cordillera Mountains of Pangasinan
province, about 250 km north of Manila,
the Philippines capital. The 1,100 m-long,
188 m-high dam embankment is believed
to be the biggest in Asia, and is the twelfth
largest in the world. It will create a vast
14 sq km reservoir for recreation, provide
downstream irrigation to 87 sq km of farmland, and supply power to the national grid
from the dams integral 345MW hydroelectric power station.
Three diversion tunnels were designed to
accommodate a flood flow of 4,600 cu m/sec.
The two largest high-level tunnels are
16.5 m-high, 11 m-wide and horseshoeshaped. They will each cater to flows up to
2,100 cu m/sec. The remaining 400 cu m/sec
of flood water will go through the smallest
low-level tunnel, which is 817 m-long, 6 m
x 6 m, and also horseshoe-shaped. It will
normally have a flow of about 120 cu m/sec.
The underground fleet at San Roque
comprised 22 Atlas Copco Wagner
Scooptram loaders and Mine Trucks, the

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ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

first such equipment to be used in the

Philippines. Six ST-7.5Z loaders worked
on the main tunnels, matched by the same
number of MT-436B mine trucks. These
were supported by a further ten of the
smaller Wagner ST-2D units for use in the
dams grout gallery tunnels. When the size
of the tunnels was increased, six of the
Wagner ST-2D loaders were replaced with
the larger Wagner ST-3.5 units.
Exceptional availability of between
92% and 96% was achieved, exceeding the
85% guaranteed by Atlas Copco. Atlas
Copco Wagners comprehensive preventative maintenance programme, combined
with operative training, which is part of the
companys on-site full service package,
was the key to the equipments success.

Three diversion tunnel portals at San

Roque.

ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

91

WORLDWIDE HYDRO

WORLDWIDE HYDRO

of 7 m/day was achieved on each face,

generally from two 4 m rounds. After
drilling, blasting and mucking out, the
exposed rock was sprayed with 50-75 mm
of fibre-reinforced shotcrete before installation of the 4 m-long Super Swellex bolts.
A second application of shotcrete was then
applied to produce a smooth 350 mm-thick
tunnel lining.
Immediate rock support was especially
important when facing the soft and unstable rock at San Roque. Moreover, in
such rock conditions, reinforcement is a
bottleneck in the excavation cycle, so the
contractor was pleased with the opportunity to use a fast and trouble-free bolt
like Swellex to speed up production.

Installing Super Swellex at San Roque.

Super Swellex was specified by the

designer, Golder Associates of Georgia,
US, as the regular pattern bolt. This
hydraulically-expanded bolt gives immediate rock support and full column bond, and
has an excellent quality control procedure
during its installation. An average advance

Economical Support Solution

at Uri
The Uri project is located in the foothills
Atlas Copco Boomer H178 face drilling
at Uri hydro scheme.

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ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

of the Himalayas, in the Kashmir Valley of

northern India. The new hydropower plant

The 11 m-wide, 8 m-high benches

remaining in the two large tunnels were
duly excavated on schedule before the start
of the typhoon season. The Atlas Copco
Wagner fleet then moved on to muck out
two 1,500 m-long tunnels at the site, a
7 m-diameter irrigation tunnel and a 9 mdiameter tunnel to the main powerhouse.
San Roque Power Corporation will sell
and supply electricity to the national grid
from 2002 for 25 years, before transferring
ownership to the Philippines National
Power Corporation.
will harness the flow of the Jhelum river,
and its 480 MW turbines will supply
much-needed electricity to the region.
Urico contractors, a design/construct
joint venture led by Skanska and NCC,
employed six Atlas Copco Boomer H178
drillrigs on the development of 22 km of
tunnels at Uri. The Boomer H178, with its
three booms, was selected as the most flexible machine available to excavate faces of
cross-sections between 25 and 100 sq m,
together with the 22 m-wide machine hall
cavern. Average progress in the tunnels
was 250 m/week, with a best week of
278 m. Atlas Copco assisted the contractors with an extensive training programme
to teach the local employees how to
operate the rigs.
Rock reinforcement at Uri consisted of
shotcreting and bolting, with Swellex comprising 75% of the bolts used. The drillrigs
were used for all rockbolting work,
installing 700 x 3 m-long bolts/week.
Swellex was chosen wherever possible,

ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

92

WORLDWIDE HYDRO

because they are quicker to

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ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

WORLDWIDE HYDRO

install, and more

than grouted

economical

overall,

ROCK & SOIL REINFORCEMENT

93

rebar bolts. Indeed, in places where water

was flowing, Swellex was the only realistic
option. The rock encountered varied from
quartz schist to shale, with some of more
recent volcanic origin.
Construction at Uri involved the excavation of 1.2 million cu m of rock underground, and the placement of 375,000 cu m
of concrete lining along the 15 km of water
tunnels.

Project: Uri hydroelectric power station. Location:

Northern India, Jammu and Kashmir. Excavation
method: Drill/blast, top heading and bench.
Contractor: Joint venture Skanska and NCC.
Designer: Skanska/NCC.
Rock: Variable, from weak to hard rock.
Rock reinforcement requirement: To cut bottleneck in
production cycle.
Rockbolt selected: Standard Swellex.

Right Combination
Alto
Lindoso

Project: Alto Lindoso hydropower.

Location: Northern Portugal, close to Spanish border.
Excavation method: Drill/blast.
Contractor: Torno Construction.
Client: EDP Portugal National Power Board.
Rock: Hard granite, weathered granite, schists, and
shales. Rock reinforcement requirement: To provide
temporary support for access ramps, tunnel and
chambers.
Rockbolt selected: Standard Swellex.

at

Atlas Copco was the main supplier to

Italian contractor Torno for the Alto
Lindoso 600 MW underground hydroelectric plant located in northern Portugal,
close to the border with Spain. The company provided all of the drilling equipment
needed for 12 km of headrace, tailrace and
access tunnels. The power generating plant
was installed in a chamber 70 m south of a
110 m-high arched dam with a span of
296 m near the confluence of the Castro
Laboreiro and Lima rivers, which provides
a maximum head of 338 m.
Atlas Copco helped train the drillrig
operators and maintenance personnel, and
provided a manned workshop container for
hydraulic service operations at site.
The five Boomer rigs employed drilled
mainly in hard granite with a compressive
strength of between 1,800 and 2,000 bar.
Around the tailrace tunnel exits, the

drillers faced weathered granite, as well as

some schists and shales.
Torno operated a two-shift system of
12 h/shift, gaining advances of 3.5 m/round.
Swellex rockbolts were used exclusively
for rock reinforcement, complemented
where necessary by shotcreting, wire mesh
and steel arches. The combination of Torno
skills with Atlas Copco service succeeded
in completion of what had previously been
a very troublesome project, and Alto
Lindoso is now contributing power to the
Portuguese national grid.

View of dam site at Alto Lindoso.

Project: 40 m-deep open pit at Ybbs-Persenbeug power station.

Location: River Danube, Austria.
Excavation method: Hydraulic breakers and excavators.
Contractor: JV of Mayreder-Kraus, Porr, Universale,
Hofmann Maculan, Stuag, Ilbau, Strabag.
Rock: Faulted bedrock.
Rock reinforcement required: To secure vertical faces of open
pit.
Rockbolt selected: Super Swellex up to 12 m-long.

Super Bolts
Danube

on

the

The River Danube drives turbines in no

less than nine power stations as it wends
its way through Austria. The oldest, at
Ybbs-Persenbeug, was built in 1959 with
General view of open pit at YbbsPersenbeug power station.

Inserting 12 m-long Swellex rockbolt

to support the cut beside the
Danube.

six turbines installed. By the early 1990s,

more capacity was required, and it was
decided to install an additional 48 MW
turbine.
The project involved the excavation of a
180 m-long x 40 m-deep x 20 m-wide
open pit alongside the existing station,
without interrupting its operation. Trials
with drill/blast indicated an unacceptable
high level of vibration which, combined
with faulting in the bedrock in the vicinity
of the station, threatened the existing turbine installations.
It was decided to use hydraulic breakers
and excavators, together with additional
rock reinforcement of the vertical walls of
the pit. The design consultants advised the
client that cement-grouted rockbolts,
which take up to a week to set, would
cause excessive delays to the project.
Accordingly, it was decided to use Atlas
Copco Super Swellex bolts which, even in
the long lengths required in this unusual
installation, take only 15-20 minutes to
install, including the time spent drilling.
Bolts of lengths 8 m, 10 m, and 12 m
were guided into the 48 mm-diameter drillholes by hand, and then pushed home by
one of the two Atlas Copco drillrigs
employed at site. Some 2,000 Super Swellex
bolts were used, 900 of which were 12 mlong.
The bolts gave instant support to the
walls of the pit, helping keep the project on
time and within budget. The chief engineer
of the joint venture constructing the power
station observed that it would have been
impossible to stick to the construction
sched- ule without the rapid and secure
installation offered by the Swellex bolting
system.

Rock Mass Stabilization at

Tala Hydro
Tala Hydro scheme has been constructed
in the remote Himalayan kingdom of
Bhutan, using more than 40 items of capital equipment supplied by Atlas Copco.
The dam site is about 85 km by road from
the border with India, and is located near
the village of Wangkha, on the Wangchu
river, some 3km downstream of the existing Chukha tailrace outfall.
Hindustan Construction found MAI
anchors were crucial for stabilization of
the walls of the desilting chambers at Tala,
and as primary support during excavation
of the Head Race Tunnel (HRT). The same
anchors have also been found to be very
useful in reducing pore water pressure
behind the support system.
Major features of Tala are: three desilting
chambers sized at 250 m x 13.9 m x 18.5
m; a 22.97 km-long, 6.8 m finished
diameter,
50 sq m modified horseshoeshaped, concrete-lined headrace tunnel (HRT); and an
underground powerhouse 206 m-long by 19
m-wide and 45.5 mhigh, with transformer
cavern 191 m-long by 16 m-wide and 27 mhigh. The HRT, which has been
excavated at 7.5 m-diameter with rock
cover of 60 m to 1 km, utilized five
construction adits. In the tunnels, Atlas
Copco Boomer 352s were used in rock
classes 1, 2 and 3, where the average
advance was 120 m/month, and in class 4
rock up to 70 m/month. Class 5 rock,
which had to be fully ribbed at 60-75 cm
intervals, strutted, bolted, meshed and
shotcreted, slowed advances to 30 m/month.
The Atlas Copco Secoroc button bits were
reported by the contractors to have
S.D. Jeur, Project manager, Hindustan Construction
Company, C4 Package used Atlas Copco Odex for
piperoofing, in combination with MAI SDAs, to
make tunnelling possible through soil.

Project: Tala Hydro on Wangchu river, 1,020

MW. Client: Tala Hydro Power Authority (THPA).
Location: Wangka, Kingdom of Bhutan.
Excavation method: Drill/blast.
Contractors: Jaiprakash; Hindustan Construction; Larsen &
Toubro.
Rock: Gneiss with quartzite bands and biotite
schists. Rock reinforcement requirement: Roof
support. Rockbolt selected: MAI SDA.
achieved up to 30% longer life than
expected.
Hindustan Construction used MAI self
drilling anchors (SDA) for stabilizing the
reinforced concrete wall of desilting
Chamber No 3. The wall of the chamber
was anchored to the deeper competent rock
using one row of 114 MAI SDA with 20 m
length and 38 mm-diameter at 3 m centres,
and another row of 36 MAI SDA with 24
m length and 51 mm-diameter at 3 m centres. 32 t pull out tests conducted on the 38
mm-diameter and 20 m-long MAI SDA
resulted in displacements of 11 mm and 17
mm respectively, well within specification.
Hindustan Construction used the
Drainage, Reinforcement, Excavation,
Support Solution (DRESS) in the 330mlong section of HRT affected by adverse
geology in Package C4. Here, MAI SDAs
were used both as radial bolts and as
drainage elements, in combination with
Odex Piperoofs. For anchoring steel arches,
SDA of 8-12 m lengths were installed in a
systematic pattern. If no water seepage
resulted, they were grouted. Two 38 t pull
out tests were conducted on 38 mm-diameter, 8 m-long MAI anchors to check the
efficacy of grouted anchors in the poor

strata in the HRT. These passed, with displacements of 16 mm and 22.8 mm.

Atlas Copco Boltec 435H at work in

Tala headrace tunnel.