Motors make light of tunnelling through the Alps
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WEG Electric Motors product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
May 21, 2004
WEG AC induction motors, inverter drives, soft starters and transformers are playing a major role in a drilling machinery package that is helping to construct the world's longest railway tunnel.
WEG AC induction motors, inverter drives, soft starters and transformers are playing a major role in a drilling machinery package that is helping to construct the world's longest railway tunnel in the Swiss Alps.
The 57km-long St Gotthard tunnel is part of the new Transalpine Railway, a major development that will make high-speed (up to 250km/h) rail travel a reality in Switzerland.
It will help to shorten travel times and reduce transportation costs in the Alpine region and beyond.
The Transalpine is the latest in a series of high-speed lines, which have created a pan-European network over the last 20 years.
These developments mean that, by 2005, there will be around 6000km of high-speed lines throughout Europe.
Drilling work on the St Gotthard Base Tunnel, which is located between Erstfeld and Biasca on the Zurich to Lugano line, started one and half years ago and will be complete by 2012.
Conditions for the drilling operation are tough, with reliability paramount in a major project of this size.
Effective cooling of the drilling machines is essential and it is in this area that WEG is playing a major role with a comprehensive package of motors, drives, soft starters and transformers provided by HS-Antriebssysteme, WEG's representative in Switzerland.
The WEG motors are linked to AC inverter drives that control water pumps for refrigeration of the drilling machines.
The inverter drives are 12-pulse units, designed to reduce the harmonic distortion of the main power supply and increase the input power factor.
They control the motors automatically, according to the refrigeration requirements of the drilling machine, increasing or decreasing the speed of the motors according to signal feedback of the water flow.
The nature of the operating environment in the tunnel means that the WEG AC drives are housed in independent panels, with line reactors, EMC filters and all safety components, such as main disconnect switches, high speed semiconductor fuses etc that are necessary for the protection of the operators and the equipment.
In common with the drives, the system transformers are also mounted in a separate enclosure, complete with protection panels and electrical energy distribution equipment.
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