The first prefabricated square pile was laid Thursday for the Taihu Lake tunneling project of the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou South Expressway, local sources said.
The 10.79-kilometer-long Taihu Lake Tunnel runs from Mashan of Wuxi to Nanquan by traversing through the Meiliang Lake, making it the longest and widest undersea tunnel project in China.
An open-cutting method in water reclamation is adopted in order to protect the ecological environment of Taihu Lake as much as possible.
The cofferdam steel plates have extended from the two sides of the lake into the lake by more than 600 meters. The pile-driving ship began to carry out prefabricated pile construction on the tunnel foundation.
When the steel cofferdam is completed, the lake will be pumped and excavated in sections. According to calculations, the amount of earthwork produced by the Taihu Lake Tunnel will exceed 10 million square meters to become a precious resource for reuse.
Taihu Lake Tunnel is a key control project of the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou South Expressway. It is built on a two-way, six-lane highway standard. Upon its completion, the highway will connect the highway between Nanjing and Changzhou, southwest of Suzhou and Shanghai to form a second express highway between Shanghai and Nanjing.
(Source: Jiangsu International Channel)
