Sir Marc Isambard Brunel was a French-British engineer who is most famous for the work he did in Britain. He constructed the Thames Tunnel and was the father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube construction techniques rather than traditional tunnel boring methods.
A slurry wall is a civil engineering technique used to build reinforced concrete walls in areas of soft earth close to open water, or with a high groundwater table. This technique is typically used to build diaphragm (water-blocking) walls surrounding tunnels and open cuts, and to lay foundations. Slurry walls are used at Superfund sites to contain the waste or contamination and reduce potential future migration of waste constituents, often with other waste treatment methods. Slurry walls are a "well-established" technology but the decision to use slurry walls for a certain project requires geophysical and other engineering studies to develop a plan appropriate for the needs of that specific location. Slurry walls may need to be used in conjunction with other methods to meet project objectives.
The Thames Tunnel is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London, connecting Rotherhithe and Wapping. It measures 35 ft (11 m) wide by 20 ft (6.1 m) high and is 1,300 ft (400 m) long, running at a depth of 75 ft (23 m) below the river surface measured at high tide. It is the first tunnel known to have been constructed successfully underneath a navigable river. It was built between 1825 and 1843 by Marc Brunel, and his son, Isambard, using the tunnelling shield newly invented by the elder Brunel and Thomas Cochrane.
James Henry Greathead was an English mechanical and civil engineer renowned for his work on the London Underground railways, Winchester Cathedral, and Liverpool overhead railway, as well as being one of the earliest proponents of the English Channel, Irish Sea and Bristol Channel tunnels. His invention is also the reason that the London Underground is colloquially named the "Tube".
The Tower Subway is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in central London, between Tower Hill on the north bank of the river and Vine Lane on the south. In 1869 a 1,340-foot-long (410 m) circular tunnel was dug through the London clay using a cast iron circular shield independently invented and built by James Henry Greathead, similar to an idea that had been not received a patent in 1864, nor built by Peter W. Barlow.
Peter William Barlow was an English civil engineer, particularly associated with railways, bridges, the design of tunnels and the development of tunnelling techniques. In 1864 he patented a design for a cylindrical tunnelling shield, and obtained a provisional patent in 1868 for an improved design.
Kennington is a London Underground station on Kennington Park Road in Kennington within the London Borough of Southwark. The station is at the junction of the Charing Cross and Bank branches of the Northern line to the north and the Morden and Battersea Power Station branches to the south. Its neighbouring stations to the north are Waterloo on the Charing Cross branch and Elephant & Castle on the Bank branch; the next stations to the south are Oval and Nine Elms. The station is in both Travelcard Zones 1 and 2.
A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels. Tunnels are excavated through hard rock, wet or dry soil, or sand, each of which requires specialized technology.
Alfred Ely Beach was an American inventor, entrepreneur, publisher, and patent lawyer, born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is most known for his design of New York City's earliest subway predecessor, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, which became the first subway in America. He was an early owner and cofounder of Scientific American and Munn & Co., the country's leading patent agency, and helped secure patents for Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and other innovators. A member of the Union League of New York, he also invented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power.
Shaft mining or shaft sinking is the action of excavating a mine shaft from the top down, where there is initially no access to the bottom. Shallow shafts, typically sunk for civil engineering projects, differ greatly in execution method from deep shafts, typically sunk for mining projects.
Mott, Hay and Anderson (MHA) was a successful 20th century firm of consulting civil engineers based in the United Kingdom. The company traded until 1989, when it merged with Sir M MacDonald & Partners to form Mott MacDonald.
The Brunel Museum is a small museum situated at the Brunel Engine House, Rotherhithe, London Borough of Southwark. The Engine House was designed by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel as part of the infrastructure of the Thames Tunnel which opened in 1843 and was the first tunnel to be built under a navigable river anywhere in the world. It comprises the Engine House and the Tunnel Shaft, with rooftop garden. Isambard Kingdom Brunel worked with his father on the project from 1823 and was appointed Resident Engineer in January 1827 at the age of 20.
The Heathrow Cargo Tunnel is a road tunnel in the London Borough of Hillingdon, London, UK that serves London Heathrow Airport.
A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a vertical structural element of a deep foundation, driven or drilled deep into the ground at the building site.
The Inland Feeder is a 44 mi (71 km) high capacity water conveyance system that connects the California State Water Project to the Colorado River Aqueduct and Diamond Valley Lake. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California designed the system to increase Southern California's water supply reliability in the face of future weather pattern uncertainties, while minimizing the impact on the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta environment in Northern California. The feeder takes advantage of large volumes of water when available from Northern California, depositing it in surface storage reservoirs, such as Diamond Valley Lake, and local groundwater basins for use during dry periods and emergencies. This improves the quality of Southern California drinking water by allowing more uniform blending of better quality water from the state project with Colorado River supplies, which has a higher mineral content.
Deep level underground is construction that is 20 m (66 ft) or more below ground and not using the cut-and-cover method, especially train stations, air raid shelters and bunkers, and some tunnels and mines. Cut-and-cover is a simple method of construction for shallow tunnels where a trench is excavated and roofed over with an overhead support structure that is strong enough to carry the load of what is to be built above the tunnel.
Tunnels are dug in types of materials varying from soft clay to hard rock. The method of tunnel construction depends on such factors as the ground conditions, the ground water conditions, the length and diameter of the tunnel drive, the depth of the tunnel, the logistics of supporting the tunnel excavation, the final use and shape of the tunnel and appropriate risk management. Tunnel construction is a subset of underground construction.
The Humber Gas Tunnel is a natural gas-carrying pipeline that runs underneath the Humber Estuary between Paull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and Goxhill in Lincolnshire, England. The project was started in April 2018, and the pipeline was used to transport gas for the first time in December 2020. It is designed to carry 20% of the gas used in the United Kingdom, and is a crucial feeder pipeline to carry gas to the south of England. It is the longest pipe in a tunnel in Europe, and due to being inserted into the tunnel that was deliberately flooded with water, it is the longest hydraulically inserted gas pipeline in the world.
Euston tunnel is a tunnel currently planned in London that will carry the High Speed 2 (HS2) railway between Euston railway station and Old Oak Common railway station.
