Increased capacity of the railway traffic in Luxembourg thanks to DuPont™ Typar® SF
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Summary:
Luxembourg – Luxembourg Railway line – Contern - Sandweiler
DuPont de Nemours (Luxembourg) S.àr.l.
The high resistance to failure and high energy absorption, as well as the benefits of on-site logistics, handling and ease of installation of DuPont™ Typar® SF geotextiles played a major role in an ambitious construction project in Luxembourg consisting of doubling the width of an existing single railway track.
The railway track between Luxembourg-City and Sandweiler-Contern is located in an area where the road system is particularly congested during rush-hour. The project was ambitious: Doubling the width of the existing single railway track allowing for an increased capacity of railway traffic and an increased speed. The dimensions of the building site were huge: 6.6km long with 180’000m3 of excavated rock as the line ran across rock trenches in some places.
Typar® SF geotextiles were chosen for this project due to a number of reasons: Thanks to the unique thermally bonded non-woven technology, Typar® SF geotextiles offer a much higher resistance before failure than competing products. Combined with its higher energy absorption capabilities, they deliver a much better solution. For instance, with a 1.15 kN resistance to punching, Typar® has an area density of 136g/m2 while a competing product area density is 300g/m2.
Typar® also offered considerable benefits in terms of on-site logistics, handling and ease of installation for a construction project of this scale. Equally, the availability of Typar® rolls in a great variety of sizes was another handling asset for this building site, where the existing railway was embedded in the rock. The contractor was able to adapt the choice of roll widths used to the accessibility of each area. Larger widths and lengths (up to 100m) were used for uncovered zones allowing a fast installation, while smaller sizes were applied to confined areas, providing a time saving convenient to the installation team.