EqualOcean has learned that on May 6, 2024, a soil-pressure-balanced shield machine developed by China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) was officially launched during the construction of Metro Line 7 project in Chile's capital city of Santiago.
Chile's capital Santiago metro line 7 project is 26 kilometers long, is expected to cross the capital region of eight municipalities, the whole line is expected to operate for 37 minutes, the project will greatly shorten the project will be completed between the two terminals of the commuting time, will benefit about 1.6 million residents along the route.
On the morning of May 6, in the city of Lenca, Chile's capital region, the Minister of Transport and Telecommunications, Mr. Muñoz, presided over the inauguration ceremony and officially announced the name of the shield machine, "Matucana".
At the event, Minister Muñoz said in an interview with reporters that in order to improve the quality of life of the Chilean people with a sense of access and happiness, as well as to speed up the governance of urban construction and infrastructure layout, the Chilean government to introduce foreign advanced technology is one of the important ways to achieve the goal, and this time, the shield machine made in China across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to Chile, used in the subway project of cooperation between the two countries is one of the good forces for the introduction of technology. The arrival of the Chinese-made shield machine across the vast Pacific Ocean to be used in the metro project between Chile and China is one of the good forces of technology introduction.
In recent years, China Railway Construction Corporation has won successive bids for infrastructure projects in Chile, including the Santiago Line 6 West Extension Project, and the franchised healthcare network project in the O'Higgins Region of Chile. This Santiago Metro Line 7 Section 1 project, which was won by China Railway Construction Corporation in 2021, is about 7.9 kilometers long, covering about 6.6 kilometers of shield construction tunnels. This project is the first time in the Chilean metro system that a shield machine has been used for metro construction, adopting a completely new approach to construction. With a length of 105 meters and an excavation diameter of about 9.8 meters, the use of shield equipment for infrastructure construction improves the digging speed and turning capacity of the existing technology, and at the same time has the new feature of wide adaptation to the ground, with little impact on the ground environment, and in general has little impact on the surface traffic of the city and the life of the residents along the route.