Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 221 High-speed rail project starts
If we talk about the country with the longest railway mileage in the world, it must be the United States. American railways experienced rapid development from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. In 1916, the railway mileage reached a peak of 40 kilometers, but has gradually decreased since then.

Wang Jiankun collected some data when he went to the United States. As of the year before last, the railway mileage in the United States was still 26 kilometers.

However, he now wants to build a railway in northern Myanmar, and the United States’ road construction technology is no longer of much reference value.

Most of their railways were built in the last century. The construction technology at that time was very primitive and the quality of the built railways was very poor.

After World War II, the United States rarely built railways and instead vigorously developed the aviation transportation industry, so the machinery and equipment for railway construction were mainly purchased from Germany and Japan.

Moreover, most of the railways built in the United States are on plains and hilly areas, and railway construction is relatively simple, so it is of little reference value to Wang Jiankun.

So he mainly looked for relevant railway construction technology from the information collected from Germany and Japan.

Wang Jiankun planned to build a high-speed electrified railway, so the roadbed would basically use viaducts and tunnels, and even low bridges would be built on flat ground.

This can prevent foreign objects from invading the railway line and colliding with high-speed trains.

It is impossible for a high-speed train running at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour to brake suddenly when it sees an intruder, because the emergency braking distance would be as high as several kilometers.

To build viaducts and tunnels, railway bridge-building machines and tunnel boring machines are needed.

The double-cantilever bridge-building machines used on railways were first used by the Soviet Union, and then many countries began to imitate them. Currently, Germany and Italy have the best technology. The bridge-building machines used by Japan when building the Shinkansen were also purchased from these two countries.

The production of such large equipment requires a hydraulic press of 3 tons or above. Only after passing the forging of a -ton hydraulic press can the cantilever and support columns withstand the enormous pressure and tension and will not break when transporting hundreds or thousands of tons of concrete box girders.

The tunnel boring machine was first invented by British scientists.

In 1818, inspired by the holes drilled by shipworms, British engineer Marc Isambard Brunel proposed the shield tunneling method and obtained a patent, inventing the earliest open hand-dug shield machine.

From 1834 to 1841, the square cast iron frame tunnel boring machine designed by Brunel was successfully used for the first time in the tunnel project across the Thames.

In 1869, British engineer James Henry Greathead improved the shield machine into a circular one and adopted fan-shaped cast iron segment technology, which further promoted the practical application of the shield machine.

However, mass production and improvement of industrial technology started in Germany and then spread to countries such as Japan and the United States.

Germany invented the grouting method (a technique of injecting cement into tunnel walls for reinforcement) in 1902, which expanded the scope of application of shield machines.

During World War II, Germany used tunnel boring machines in military projects (such as air-raid shelters and underground factories), which accelerated their industrial application.

Wang Jiankun searched through his mind and found some technical information about tunnel boring machines and bridge-building machines from 7 or 8 years ago, which contained relatively detailed pictures and schematic diagrams, as well as early product structure diagrams.

He asked Tomoko to deduce based on these schematics and structural diagrams, and to design new shield machines and bridge-building machines according to his requirements for the construction of high-speed railways.

The first thing was to increase the size of the shield machine. The data showed that the working diameter of the early shield machines was only 8 meters, which was far from meeting his requirements. He asked Tomoko to design a shield machine with a diameter of 18 meters.

This type of shield machine can drill a tunnel that can accommodate a double-track railway in one go. It does not need to be excavated twice to build a double-track railway like the old 8-meter diameter shield machine.

The railway bridge erection machine is also required to be larger in size, with the maximum length of a single box beam being 60 meters and the maximum lifting weight being 1 tons. The longer the single concrete box beam is, the faster it can be built, because the number of bridge columns can be reduced, and a 60-meter-long box beam can be transported each time it is erected and transported, reducing the number of times it needs to be moved.

After giving the design requirements to Zhizi, Wang Jiankun began to preside over the exploration and site selection work.

Because the railway being built is a high-speed railway, the line must be as straight as possible and the vertical slope must be as small as possible.

Fortunately, the global satellite positioning system has been built for the most part, and the network has been established in the Asia-Pacific region.

Wang Jiankun took the newly created chief railway engineer Zhan You and first flew a small CJ-1 aircraft to explore the terrain between Landau and Magang.

The main purpose is to teach Zhanyou how to use the satellite positioning system for exploration.

He himself used his superpowers to project the terrain, and then combined it with satellite positioning system data to generate digital coordinates.

Because there are still a lot of railways to be built in the future, he will only use his superpowers to assist in exploration at the beginning. He will point out when major mistakes are made by the railway engineer team headed by Zhan You. If these do not occur, he will let Zhan You and others fully assist in railway construction.

After teaching Zhanyou how to survey and select sites, he handed over the site selection and design work of the railway line to Zhanyou, while he returned to the base in northern Myanmar to design the high-speed train.

To this end, he first built dozens of high-speed train models of different shapes in the base.

The shapes of these trains are all designed by Zhizi based on the general solution of the NS equation, and are very aerodynamic.

Then a low-speed wind tunnel was built to conduct wind tunnel tests on these high-speed train models.

As for why wind tunnel testing is still necessary after using the general solution of the NS equations for calculations?
That's because the entire upper part of the train is streamlined, but the wheels and transmission parts at the bottom of the train are not streamlined. There are also many peripheral devices such as the power connection part on the top, the door part, and the connection parts.

These have many irregular bumps and depressions, which are difficult to calculate using the NS equation.

Therefore, it is very necessary to use a wind tunnel to blow it.

After the wind tunnel test, there were finally two nose shapes and three cabin shapes left. They all performed very well in the wind tunnel test, with very high scores in terms of drag and reliability.

In the end, Wang Jiankun decided to create an analog line.

He chose a location near the foot of the mountain and built a 1-kilometer-long seamless railway track.

Then the two engine heads and three carriages were tested in combination.

After half a day of testing, the optimal combination of the two engine heads and three carriages emerged, but Wang Jiankun still only chose two of them.

After completing the design, Wang Jiankun output the drawings of the locomotive, carriages, rails, bridge-building machine, tunnel boring machine, etc. from his mind to the central computer.

Then, each factory under the control of Quanjiezhen began to manufacture prototypes.

(End of this chapter)