Modern approach for studying granular and cohesionless soil conditioning for EPB tunneling

In the last ten years, full face mechanized excavation, mainly with EPB machines, has widely increased. The applicability range of EPB machines has been widened thanks to the technological progresses of the machines themselves and to the quality of the conditioning products. Since no standards are worldwide recognized for the laboratory testing of conditioned soil, each research center has developed its own procedure. In the paper the protocol developed and used at the "Tunneling and Underground Space" of Politecnico di Torino is presented and discussed.