Recently, the General Office of the National Development and Reform Commission announced the list of national engineering research centers included in the new sequence management, and 191 units were selected. These engineering research centers will focus on solving the "card neck" technical problems in economic and social development and undertake more major national scientific and technological innovation tasks.
Relying on the construction of China Merchants Chongqing Transportation Research and Design Institute Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Merchants Communications Branch), the National Engineering Laboratory of Highway Tunnel Construction Technology was successfully included in the new sequence of the National Engineering Research Center, renamed the National Engineering Research Center for Highway Tunnels, becoming the only national engineering research center in the professional field of highway tunnels to incorporate the new sequence.
01 The original intention has not changed The dream tunnel
Backed by the majestic Nanshan Mountain and facing the mighty Yangtze River, the research center was originally located five kilometers in the south bank of Chongqing Municipality – such a place adjacent to mountains and rivers seems to be destined for its historical mission of crossing lofty mountains and mountains and running through rivers, lakes and seas.
In the 1970s, tens of thousands of officers and soldiers fought for 10 years, 168 road construction officers and soldiers sacrificed their precious lives for the construction of the Xinjiang Duku Highway, at that time the Ministry of Communications Science Research Institute Chongqing Branch of the Investment Department received instructions, formed the Tianshan Highway Tunnel Research Group, rushed to the front line, and devoted themselves to the measurement and installation of the preliminary survey stage of the three tunnels on the entire Duku Highway. Combined with the actual problems of alpine permafrost tunnel construction, they carried out scientific research work around project topics related to tunnel construction. The earliest professional scientific and technological team of highway tunnels in China came into being.
In the 1980s, bathed in the spring breeze of reform and opening up, the construction of highway transportation on the mainland gradually entered a new stage of rapid development, and the number of highway tunnels was increasing. In order to develop the proprietary technology of highway tunnels and support the growing demand for road tunnel construction, under the background of "no standard, no scientific research and no platform" in the domestic road tunnel industry at that time, the tunnel team of China Merchants Jiaoke reported to the former Ministry of Communications the work plan of establishing a tunnel professional research office. The former Ministry of Communications actively organized research and overall planning, and in 1991 issued the task of building a "highway tunnel and geotechnical laboratory" to the China Merchants Communications Section. The earliest professional laboratory of highway tunnels in China was born.
As the core founder of the first phase of the construction of the laboratory, Liu Wei, secretary of the party committee and chairman of the board of directors of China Merchants Communications, recalled: "The laboratory lasted six years since the task was issued, and it was not officially accepted until September 1997. The most difficult thing is to imagine the scientific research scenario and independently develop a number of large-scale non-standard test equipment and facilities, including a 1:1 ratio solid test tunnel and a 1:10 scale model test tunnel. ”
⚪ 1:1 tunnel laboratory under construction in 1996.
⚪ The new appearance of the 1:1 physical road tunnel laboratory in 2022.
In the evaluation work of the laboratory, academician Sun Jun, academician Xian Xuefu, academician Zheng Yingren and other industry giants all believe that the laboratory is "ingenious and innovative in design and concept, strong in engineering practicality, and has reached the international advanced level".
There is no end to development, endless innovation, and endless construction of laboratories. After several generations of relay construction, today's National Engineering Research Center for Highway Tunnels is led by China Merchants and Communications, jointly built by CCCC Second Highway Survey and Design Research Institute Co., Ltd. and Poly Changchang Engineering Co., Ltd., and has become a comprehensive laboratory cluster composed of tunnel disaster prevention and mitigation technology laboratory, tunnel structure safety technology laboratory, and underwater tunnel construction technology laboratory.
The research center has more than 300 sets of its own instruments and equipment, has the largest test site in the professional field of highway tunnels, cultivates a team with excellent professional quality, outstanding scientific research ability, reasonable age structure and excellent service level, edits or participates in the compilation of most of the industry norms in the field of highway tunnels, supports the construction and operation of many "first-most- difficult" key projects in the country, and forms an integrated operation mechanism of "production, study and research".
The research center has won 2 first prizes and 2 second prizes of national scientific and technological progress, more than 100 science and technology awards of provincial, ministerial and national first-level societies, and has also cultivated a large number of industry leaders and well-known experts such as national engineering survey and design masters, national outstanding scientific and technological workers, first-level candidates for the new century 100000 talents project, special allowance experts of the State Council, young scientific and technological talents in transportation, high-level talents in the transportation industry, outstanding scientific and technological workers of national highways, and 100 outstanding engineers of China's highways.
From the previous "Highway Tunnel and Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory", "Key Laboratory of Tunnel Construction and Maintenance Technology transportation industry", "National Engineering Laboratory of Highway Tunnel Construction Technology", to the current "National Engineering Research Center for Highway Tunnels", the name of the change has witnessed the whole process of the development of the highway tunnel scientific research platform of China Merchants and Jiaoke, and the sincere heart of the research center to take the development needs of the country and the industry as its own responsibility has never changed, such as the thickness of the South Mountain, such as the mighty Yangtze River.
02 Keep in mind the mission and climb the peak
"Good scholars do their best, and good people find it difficult." The research center adheres to the demand-oriented and tough problems. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period alone, the research center participated in 80% of the scientific research tasks related to the highway tunnel profession in the current national key research and development program. The research work gives full play to the key role of science and technology leadership and innovation drive, and has made outstanding contributions to the key core technology of the mainland highway tunnel and the construction of national key projects.
Focusing on the world's longest highway immersed tube tunnel, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge immersed tube tunnel, through the research on the key technologies of ventilation and smoke exhaust and fire prevention and control of ultra-long and ultra-wide underwater tunnels, the "stuck neck" problems such as ventilation and smoke exhaust, personnel escape and joint fire prevention in the super-long and ultra-wide underwater tunnel have been solved.
⚪ Full-size immersed tube tunnel fire comprehensive test platform (1:1 solid immersed tube tunnel test system).
Focusing on the Gongbei Tunnel of the Zhuhai Connecting Line of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the first tunnel in China constructed by the pipe curtain freezing excavation method and the world's largest cross-sectional highway tunnel, through the research on the key technology of "long-distance curved pipe curtain + horizontal control freezing", the technical problems such as the construction of long-distance space curve pipe jacking pipe curtain under weak geological conditions in the sea, the major safety risk control of horizontal long-distance curve pipe jacking pipe curtain super large section freeze, and the horizontal ring of long-distance large sectional one-time freezing were overcome.
Around the world's widest submarine immersed tube tunnel - deep and medium channel immersed tube tunnel, through the steel shell concrete immersed pipe large intelligent pouring equipment research and development, can meet the ultra-wide, variable width pipe joint lane hole hole full coverage pouring construction, as well as the automatic positioning, automatic control, automatic stop and other intelligent needs in the process of pipe section prefabrication.
The intelligent monitoring and safety assessment technology of highway tunnel developed by the research center has promoted the digitalization, networking and intelligent development of highway tunnels, realized the automatic perception and dynamic evaluation of key state information of highway tunnel construction and operation under special complex conditions, and formed a cutting-edge technical system such as response analysis, model test and structural design of suspended tunnels, which has continuously maintained the mainland's international leading position in this direction, especially the wave flow suspension tunnel experimental platform system, wave-flow- The test method of the three-field coupled suspension tunnel model of traffic load is at the international leading level.
From key projects to scientific and technological products, from traditional construction technologies to digital applications, the research center has become more and more broad-minded, the response has become more and more agile, the pace has become more and more firm, and it is using higher quality scientific and technological innovation achievements to contribute scientific research strength to accelerating the construction of a transportation power.
03 Focus on the forefront of self-reliance and self-reliance
Today, the continental highway tunnel is booming and massive, and it is a veritable tunnel power. By the end of 2020, there were 21,316 road tunnels and 21,999,300 linear meters nationwide, of which 1,394 were long tunnels and 6,235,500 linear meters, and 5,541 long tunnels were 9,633,200 linear meters. Over the past 20 years, the total length of the tunnel has increased by more than 30 times.
From a tunnel power to a tunnel power, we must not only rely on "quantity", but also rely on "quality". With the further improvement of the greater bay area, Sichuan-Tibet, Qinghai-Tibet, out of Xinjiang, out of Yunnan and other national corridors and the road network of local difficult mountainous areas, on the one hand, the construction of highway tunnels will still grow rapidly, and new problems in construction technology such as changshanling tunnels, urban tunnels, and underwater tunnels will become increasingly prominent; on the other hand, the transportation and maintenance of highway tunnels with huge stock scales will also become key industrial fields, and "paying equal attention to construction and maintenance" will be the main industrial situation facing the next stage, and there are also many unknown bottlenecks and stubborn technical problems that need to be overcome. The research center has planned ahead and has set its sights on the "card neck" technical problems of the road tunnel industry.
In the field of long tunnel pipe safety, the research center took the lead in undertaking the 2021 national key research and development plan project "Key Technologies and Equipment for Emergency Handling of Sudden Accidents in Long Highway Tunnel". The project focuses on sudden accidents such as fire, explosion and collapse of the long highway tunnel, and establishes a full-chain technology and equipment system integrating disaster detection, situation research, personnel evacuation, catastrophe control and emergency rehabilitation, which will significantly improve the level of intelligence, precision, rapidity and integration of emergency handling of mainland highway tunnels.
⚪ Wave flow field suspension tunnel structure dynamic response model test.
In the field of underwater tunnel construction, the research center integrates the cutting-edge technology of suspended tunnels formed by interdisciplinary disciplines such as tunnel engineering, hydrodynamics and structural dynamics, and will focus on the cutting-edge technologies of the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Science and Technology "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a Transportation Power Driven by Scientific and Technological Innovation" to promote scientific research. To this end, the research center continues to devote itself to this world-class problem facing the future, facing the frontier of science and technology and having major challenges on the basis of the research of the Established Underwater Tunnel Laboratory, the National Natural Science Foundation of China project "Response and Experimental Research on Suspension Tunnels under Dynamic Load Based on Wave Flow Field Solid Transport" and the Ministry of Transport project "Preliminary Research on Key Technologies of Deep-sea Suspension Tunnels".
⚪ Underwater Tunnel Construction Technology Laboratory.
In the field of intelligent "construction, management and transportation" of highway tunnels, the research center has developed new scientific and technological equipment such as tunnel light cleaning robots, tunnel inspection robots, tunnel drainage pipe and ditch detection robots, tunnel intelligent sound and light and shadow flexible blocking systems, tunnel disease targeting automatic monitoring systems, etc. through the integration of new generation technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and robots; developed tunnel structure risk management platform, tunnel operation risk integration management platform, immersed pipe tunnel service performance grading evaluation system, etc., so that the tunnel digital archiving, Intelligent management has become a reality, and the level of tunnel management has been further improved.
Dr. Ding Hao, director of the research center and president of the Tunnel and Underground Engineering Research Institute of China Merchants And Communications, said that in the journey of accelerating the construction of a transportation power, the state has given more prominence to new directions such as green, safe and intelligent development and intensive development of land space. The research center will serve the national key scientific and technological research and major projects as the goal, focus on the technical needs of the whole life cycle of the highway tunnel, is committed to solving the "card neck" problem and key technical bottlenecks in technological development, actively organizes and actively participates in the development of key common technologies in the industry, promotes the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, deepens the cooperation mechanism between industry, education and research, explores the establishment of an innovation consortium, and builds itself into a national strategic scientific and technological force that improves the efficiency of industrial innovation and promotes the deep integration of the innovation chain and industrial chain.
Science and technology are strong, and transportation will be strong. On the basis of the "one center, three bases" plan, the research center will adhere to the cultural concept of "innovation, hard work, collaboration and excellence", give full play to the scientific and technological innovation ability and overall service capabilities of the lead unit, investment promotion and communications and co-construction units, absorb industry leaders of various subdivisions, promote the characteristics of all sectors of society, accelerate the promotion and application of new technologies and the development of industrialization, and actively participate in the grand cause of accelerating the construction of a transportation power.
Author | Liu Qiuzhuo
Image | China Merchants Chongqing Transportation Research and Design Institute Co., Ltd
Edit | Li ning
Audit | Lian Meng
Producer | Sun Yingli
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