Since 2017, construction work on Bern's future railway station has dominated the cityscape around the station area. The aim is to build a new underground station, as the existing one has reached its capacity. The station, which opened in 1965, was designed for 16,000 passengers/day at the time and is now used by around 60,000 passengers/day. However, it will be a few years before the new station can go into operation. The opening is planned for 2027.
In 2019, the construction work first shifted into the depths. An impressive excavation pit was created at the site where the new access tunnel to the station will later be located. It reached between 15 and 30 metres in depth and had a total length of about 160 metres. A so-called bored pile wall served as the end of the wall of the excavation pit. Here, nine to 27 metre deep holes were drilled into the ground at specific intervals, which were then reinforced and concreted. Our FIBERNOX® V-ROD reinforcement was also used at this point. The high-strength and durable GFK reinforcement FIBERNOX V-ROD was installed in the bored piles, as it can be easily chipped by a tunnel boring machine. This means that the subsequent tunnel driving can be carried out without any problems and without damaging the tunnel boring machine.
H-BAU Technik supplied FIBERNOX® V-ROD GFK reinforcement with a diameter of 20 mm (straight bars) and 16 mm (spiral reinforcement bent as a continuous spiral) for this construction project.
