Does the in‐situ stress state have an effect on tool wear in deep TBM tunnelling?

Abstract

Analysis of wear data from a TBM tunnelling project under high overburden shows diverging wear rates on the disc cutters depending on their position in the cutterhead. The disc cutters at inner and middle positions in the cutterhead reach about twice the running distances compared with cutters fitted at pre‐gauge positions. This work shows that the construction of the cutterhead has an impact on the degree of abrasive wear, especially for the gauge positions. Moreover, the analysis shows that the in‐situ stress state correlates significantly with disc cutter wear. Working temperatures of disc cutters were also measured and analysed. In general, the measured temperatures are controlled by the transverse velocity of the disc cutters, which depends on the position of the disc cutter in the cutter head. Furthermore, there is a good correlation between the results of the analysis of disc cutter wear and the measured disc cutter temperatures. It is shown that high temperatures and high cutter wear occur at the same positions in the cutterhead.