📋 Tender Overview
At the final of the “Not-a-Boring Competition 2024” in Bastrop, Texas, the “Swissloop Tunneling” team prevailed thanks to a successful drilling process with a self-developed microtunnel boring machine. The ETH Zurich student team supported by Empa was awarded the “Champion Award”. After several years of intensive work by the team, this is a major milestone in the development of highly complex and innovative tunnel drilling technologies.
This year's “Not-a-Boring Competition” is the third edition of the competition held in the USA, following 2021 and 2023. Initiated by Elon Musk and organized by one of his companies – “The Boring Company” – this competition between student teams from all over the world is intended to significantly promote the spirit of innovation in tunnel construction. Innovations in the construction of tunnels are intended to help expand current and futuristic infrastructure systems underground and make them more structurally efficient. This concerns the expansion of the current transport system with underground routes. But increasingly scalable tunnel construction is also essential for concepts that have not yet been realized, such as Hyperloop, with which people and goods could be transported through tubes at top speed over long distances in the future.
“Champion Award” after being awarded the “Innovation Award” twice
At the “Not-a-Boring Competition” in March 2024, the Swiss team from “Swissloop Tunneling” competed with its microtunnel boring machine called “Groundhog Beta” against the two US teams “CU Hyperloop” and “The Diggeridoos”, the British “The Warwick Boring Team” and “Bored Tunnelers” from Bangladesh. All participating teams managed to be individually recognized for their team's specific strengths, be it the level of innovation, precision, navigation or the control of their machine. After “Swissloop Tunneling” was awarded the Innovation Prize twice in a row in its previous participations in 2021 and 2023 and came in second overall each time, the team managed to win the competition for the first time this year. For this they were awarded the “Champion Award” at the end of March.
“Swissloop Tunneling” competed in the first “Not-a-Boring Competition” in 2021 with a first model called “Groundhog Alpha”. Certain approaches to the first microtunnel boring machine have been retained since then. In the “Groundhog Beta” model, which was newly developed after the first participation, the overall system and the subsystems of the first machine were significantly redesigned. This primarily concerns the erosion system, which enables the machine to carry out a drilling process that can cope with the soil conditions in Texas. This was necessary, among other things, because “The Boring Company” competitions were moved from the desert soil in Las Vegas to Bastrop in Texas after 2021, where clay-like and very cohesive soil predominates. The liner mechanism has also been redeveloped. This simultaneously produces the wall inside the drilled tunnel as the machine moves forward. Using the “Groundhog Beta” liner, a specially manufactured polymer granulate is now brought into the condition and shape using an extrusion process in order to be able to form the tunnel wall directly on the surface of the machine
The key to success: “Groundhog Beta”
Implementing such new approaches is not only time-consuming, but also extremely challenging. The optimization work for increased reliability and effectiveness of “Groundhog Beta”, which intensified in 2023 to 2024, now made it possible to win the competition in Texas for the first time. “We are particularly proud to have achieved this result due to the challenges we successfully mastered and the great commitment of all members,” says Eugenio Valli, head of the ETH Zurich team. The success of the student project would not have been possible without the support of numerous partners from industry. These support “Swissloop Tunneling” in different ways in the project that the students have been pursuing for years in the workshop provided by Empa and on the test site in Dübendorf.
“Swissloop Tunneling” will continue the project after the successful 2023/24 season with the ambitious goal of revolutionizing the tunneling industry using scalable tunnel boring machines. The team wants to accelerate the development of infrastructure systems.
Swissloop tunneling
“Swissloop Tunneling” is an association of students from ETH Zurich and other universities and is supported by Empa, which has made this project work possible at its location in Dübendorf since the association was founded. The team is made up of students from various disciplines, from mechanical engineering to business disciplines. The team designs, develops and tests its prototype tunnel boring machine at Empa and regularly demonstrates the industry's progress at international competitions and events.
