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The first successful rectangular tunnelling shield was developed by Marc Isambard Brunel and patented by him and Lord Cochrane in January 1818. Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel used it to excavate the Thames Tunnel beginning in 1825 (though the tunnel was not opened until 1843). [1]
The shield in use during construction A scale model of the tunnelling shield at the Brunel Museum at Rotherhithe The tunnelling shield, built at Henry Maudslay 's Lambeth works and assembled in the Rotherhithe shaft, was the key to Brunel's construction of the Thames Tunnel.
In 1818 Brunel had patented a tunnelling shield. This was a reinforced shield of cast iron in which miners would work in separate compartments, digging at the tunnel-face. Periodically the shield would be driven forward by large jacks, and the tunnel surface behind it would be lined with brick.
Brunel's shield was rectangular and comprised 12 separate, independently moveable frames; the Greathead solution was cylindrical, and the "reduction of the multiplicity of parts in the Brunel shield to a single rigid unit was of immense advantage and an advance perhaps equal to the shield concept of tunneling itself", [10] though the face was ...
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (/ ˈ ɪ z ə m b ɑːr d ˈ k ɪ ŋ d ə m b r uː ˈ n ɛ l / IZZ-əm-bard KING-dəm broo-NELL; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859 [1]) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer [2] who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", [3] "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", [4] and "one of the greatest ...
The Brunel Museum in 2007, showing the new mural of the tunnel shield on the Rotherhithe Shaft. 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 ...
Diagram of Brunel's tunnelling shield and Thames Tunnel construction 1825 Using his patented tunnelling shield, Marc Brunel begins construction of the Thames Tunnel under the River Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe. Progress is slow and will be halted a number of times before the tunnel is completed. [1]
In the early 19th century, engineer Marc Brunel observed that the shipworm's valves simultaneously enabled it to tunnel through wood and protected it from being crushed by the swelling timber. With that idea, he designed the first tunnelling shield , a modular iron tunnelling framework which enabled workers to tunnel through the unstable ...