2019
Buenos Aires, Argentina
This project is due to improve the dewatering capacity of the central part of the city of Buenos Aires, especially considering the rainy season. The project will improve the draining capacity of an area of 1,700 hectares where over 315,000 people are living.
Sika Solutions
Foaming Agent
Our Sika’s local team and the Sika TBM Corporate experts recommended and tested together with the TBM team our basic foaming agent Sika® Foam TBM 101 FB-A, which is a high efficiency foaming agent for ground with high to low permeability and polymer modified. The dosage of the foaming agent was optimized as much as possible, always trying to keep the average advance speed of the TBM and most important, keeping the torque of the cutting wheel as low as possible. During tests, it was proved that the quality of the foam was very strong and fulfilled the expectation of the TBM drivers.
TBM
A leader German supplier of TBMs has provided an Earth Pressure TBM (known for its EPB technology) of around 6.0 m of diameter and almost 70 m long TBM to excavate the 5.9 km of the tunnel below the city of Buenos Aires. Excavation started inside an impressive 30 m depth shaft where the machine had to start excavation facing up to 3 bar water pressure in the mixing chamber. During full excavation, the machine can reach 20 – 25 m of tunnel per day.
Admixtures for concrete segments
Sika® ViscoCrete® WR-2000 and 2700 were used in the production of high-performance concrete, especially in concrete factories where the concrete are characterized by their low ratio water/cement, high cohesion and easy compaction. Additionally and only in special cases where the surface finishing of a few segments had to be improved, the Sika MonoTop®-620 was used with success.