Rooted in the tunnel for 38 years, Li Hong, a first-line skilled worker, was on the national science and technology podium
"Bright sword" to the world
Our reporter Qian Peijian
On November 3, the "New Technology and Application of Super Large Diameter Shield Tunneling" project of Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co., Ltd. won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award. Technician, Li Hong, known as "the first person to enter the culvert".
In March last year, Li Hong was transferred to the company's international department and was stationed in Singapore.
After learning of the award, he hurried back to China, and was isolated in a hotel due to epidemic prevention requirements. A reporter from the Workers’ Daily contacted him by phone and listened to his story of his 38-year "bright sword" life rooted in the tunnel business.
"Punching a hole in tofu"
In 1983, after graduating from Shanghai Tunnel Technical School, Li Hong joined the Shanghai Tunnel Company as a tunnel worker. Since then, he has been working in the tunnel and next to the shield machine.
"The'pipe culvert jacking work' did not originally exist. It is a new type of profession spawned after the tunnel construction has entered a period of rapid development." Li Hong said.
In the eyes of colleagues in the team, Li Hong resembled Li Yunlong and the leader of Li Yunlong in the TV series "Bright Sword". Faced with difficulties, he used his brain to "bright sword".
The underground world tens of meters deep is completely different from the ground, and the darkness in front is always invisible.
Li Hong held the steering wheel, controlled the shield dragon, and led a dozen workers toward the unknown in the vast darkness.
Twenty years ago, Li Hong, then the construction team leader, received an urgent call.
When the Interchange Station of People's Square of Shanghai Metro Line 2 overlapped and crossed Metro Line 1, the soil in front suddenly sank 10 cm. As the shield machine advances, the depression will become deeper and deeper.
This is the first crossing of the Shanghai Metro, and the situation is beyond everyone's expectations.
Underground construction is a high-risk operation. The geology of Shanghai belongs to the soft soil layer with water. If you want to dig a tunnel here, it is like "drilling a hole in tofu."
"Once the collapse is caused by improper operation, everyone is gone." Li Hong needs to make a decision: Should the shield machine move forward or stop?
Li Honghe's team repeatedly researched and calculated the data underground.
Twelve hours later, he found out the cause of the sinking.
"On the one hand, considering that the two tunnels should overlap, the reinforcement of Line 1 is relatively heavy. On the other hand, the shield machine is too fast during the advancing process." After finding the crux, he re-entered the shield machine and manually input the instructions. : What is the speed of the cutter head, what is the advancing speed, and what is the controlled slope... At the moment when it is about to start, Li Hong turned his head. In the shield body, all the team members did not fall: "Captain, let's go! Believe in you.” Seven days later, the shield machine broke through the darkness, drawing a successful conclusion to the project.
In the past 38 years, Li Hong has participated in the construction of 11 super-large-diameter shield tunnel projects, including the first super-large-diameter shield tunnel in China, and has become a skilled leader in this field.
Under his leadership, the Shanghai Tunnel Company, led by the national "863" project "Research on the Key Technology of Super-Large and Extra-long River Crossing Shield Tunnels", built the world's largest diameter tunnel-the Shanghai Yangtze River Tunnel, which resolved the world’s history of tunnel engineering. The series has never encountered problems. It was opened to traffic 14 months ahead of schedule, and set three world records in one fell swoop: the longest—the one-time excavation distance of the shield is 7.5 kilometers; the largest—two super large shields with a diameter of 15.43 meters ; The deepest-the buried depth of the shield is 55 meters.
Dare to challenge the world's problems
Li Hong is the winner of the China Skills Award, which was won by only more than 300 people across the country and is the highest award for highly skilled talents in my country.
In May 2017, Li Hong was assigned to participate in the Wuhan Sanyang Road Yangtze River Tunnel Project.
This is the first super-large-diameter cross-river tunnel in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and it is also the country’s largest-diameter and the first road-rail joint-built shield tunnel. The viscous "nian gao dan" composite stratum makes it difficult for the giant shield machine to move, and the construction period is facing a serious lag.
"Whenever the shield is maneuvered, which day will I get out of the well!" Li Hongli issued a military order.
Every day at 7 o'clock in the morning, he is the first to arrive at the construction well, and the one to leave the construction area at the latest in the evening. The shield machine control room is the battlefield for two months.
He organized expert consultations many times, brainstormed ideas, and finally worked out a solution.
In just three months, two super-large diameter shield machines were successfully restructured, restarting the journey to the bottom of the Yangtze River.
On October 1, 2018, the Yangtze River Tunnel on Sanyang Road in Wuhan was opened to traffic, and a new world record was born.
The project that won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award this time is to address the three major industry-recognized international technical problems, such as low tunneling efficiency, difficult stability control, and large environmental impact, which are urgently to be solved by tunnel construction. The three new construction technologies of "sediment control" and "pollution prevention" have broken through the technical bottleneck of the construction of super-large-diameter shield tunnels in the soft and hard uneven composite stratum, and realized the leap from centimeter to millimeter deformation in saturated soft soil. For the first time in the world, the ecological utilization of engineering mud and muck was completed.
The overall project has reached the international leading level, and the project results have been applied to 10 super-large diameter shield tunnel projects across the country.
Promote the Chinese shield to the world
In order to break through the “foreign shield” dominating the world, Li Hong participated in the research and development of the localization of shields. Based on more than ten years of operating experience, he provided suggestions, made up for shortcomings, and tackled difficulties. One year later, he became the first domestically produced machine with independent intellectual property rights. The shield machine was finally off the assembly line after hardships, and he drove the domestically made shield machine to succeed, breaking the monopoly of "foreign shield machine".
Li Hong has accumulated a lot of data in practice. The "Tunnel Remote Information Intelligent Management Software" system he designed has become the unique core technology for realizing shield intelligent monitoring and "full life cycle" maintenance.
This software system has implanted an intelligent nervous system for more than 150 domestic shield machines, breaking through the long-term foreign blockade of my country's core technology, generating nearly 250 million yuan in profits for the country and saving tens of millions of yuan for users.
Now the domestically-made shield machines have gone abroad and have been exported to many countries.
As the president of the Shanghai Tunnel Technicians Association, Li Hong knows the significance of cultivating a new generation of skilled workers.
With the help of the Shanghai Tunnel "Industry-University-Research" base and the national-level "Master Li's Studio", he cultivated shield application professionals, trained and taught 8 chief technicians, 7 senior technicians and 12 technicians in Shanghai.
Now, the training materials written by Li Hong and the industry operation specifications formulated have become the standards for the evaluation and assessment of shield tunneling underground construction operations and the job title.