Assembly of a new concrete paver, Gomaco Commander III, which will be used for putting in place the roadway in the motorway tunnels, has been completed at the southern entry of Tunnel System number one of Adler - Alpika-Service combined motorway and railway route.

The concrete paver of this type will be used for tunnel construction for the first time in Russia. Unlike other pavers of this kind, the new machine features high speed and a 3-D navigation system, which allows the unit to position itself in space following a program set up by the surveyor. The previous concrete pavers required installation of steel wire that had to be strung along the design roadbed boundary.

"Commander III Concrete Paver will allow us to increase roadbed placement speed several times as much," says Evgeny Chigirinsky, Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer. "For example, we could place up to 300 meters per month without the machinery. It will take only two weeks with the machine in operation to concrete more than 2 kilometers of a two-lane tunnel roadbed. The design speed of one lane concreting is from 400 to 600 meters in 24 hours. The only stringent requirement when the machine is used is that concrete mix will have to be delivered to the work site strictly on schedule."

The new concrete paver will start running after installation of a ventilation duct in Tunnel No. 1 that will remove truck exhaust gases from the tunnel.