โ Scribed by J. Hegemann
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
For Ruhrkohle AG, the largest mining company of the Federal Republic of Germany, nine shafts are presently being sunk. In late 1978, Gewerkschaft Walter, Essen, obtained the contract for the construction of the Voerde shaft from Bergbau AG Niederrhein, a subsidiary of Ruhrkohle AG.
The requirements to be met regarding the quality of the lining in terms of loads to be absorbed from rock pressure, hydraulic pressure, tension, etc. are very high. Up to a depth of 600 m, this shaft will be sunk through soft and water-bearing strata such as formations of Tertiary, Cretaceous, Bunter Sandstone and Permian. The freezing method therefore has to be employed.
The high requirements with regard to the quality of the lining can only be fulfilled if the lining is constructed in the form of an absolutely watertight tube, not connected to the surrounding ground and resting on a ring foundation below the frozen part of the shaft.
During sinking of the shaft, the icewall will normally absorb the load of both rock pressure and hydraulic pressure. Because of the depth of the frozen part of this shaft and for economical reasons, a yielding outer lining has to be constructed. This will serve on one hand as an auxilliary lining during sinking as a support for the icewall and, as part of the final lining on the other hand, will absorb the rock pressure. This auxilliary lining can only be of the yielding type, its flexibility must correspond to the behavior of the surrounding frozen rock. The determination of the thickness of the icewall and the outer lining was based upon results of tests carried out on frozen and non-frozen drilling cores by Prof. Jessberger's Institute at the Ruhr-University of Bochum.
Taking an outside shaft diameter of approximately 9 m, the diameter of the freezingpipe circle is 18.5 m, the number of freezing pipes is 38.
Considering an icew~ll-thickness of 8 m (on average) and using the data for friction and cohesion for the different rock formations resulting from the above mentioned tests, the lining dimensions for the different rock formations were calculated. The determined dimensions were widely varying. It also had to be considered, that the outer lining would have to bear the load of the rock pressure once the frozen core of the shaft had been finished.
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