ADVANTEX: Research of innovative tools to support the logistics of the use of excavation materials produced by the Lyon-Turin railway line for the best sustainability and circular economy of the process

The Mont-Cenis Base Tunnel is the key work of the new Lyon-Turin railway line. The project envisages a total volume of 37.2 million tons of excavated material over a period of 10 years: a considerable part of the excavated material will be used for the tunnel lining (con-crete or railway embankments) and for the embankments of the open-air sectors, while the remaining part will be transported by rail, conveyor belts, and heavy vehicles to the temporary and permanent storage sites. To maximize the circular economy and the efficiency of the materials logistic, TELT is working with the Politecnico di Torino (Department of Environment, Land, and Infrastructure Engineering, Department of Structural, Geotechnical and Building Engineering, and Department of Applied Science and Technology) and the Interdepartmental Laboratory SISCON - Safety of Infrastructures and Constructions, to study innovative solutions for the char-acterization and reuse of the excavated materials. Given that the materials are substantially undif-ferentiated during the excavation and that the geological classification requires long and complex additional verification activities, which can negatively affect the process, a significant sample of materials excavated at the survey tunnel of La Maddalena (place where the base tunnel will be excavated) were analyzed. The objective of this first phase is the search for new technologies and new processes for the early characterization of the excavated material in order to determine its intended use, designing green concretes (defining its sustainability and mechanical characteristics for structural use, through synthetic parameters, including durability analysis) and backfilling, seeking innovative tools for optimal logistics, in order to “industrialize” the identification process and optimal technologies for automatic process control and traceability, in order to give strength and speed to all activities. The subject of this work is the results of the early characterization experimentation process with the application of artificial intelligence and possible innovative circu-lar solutions.