Roadheader

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Excavation equipment

title: "Roadheader" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["engineering-vehicles", "mining-equipment", "excavating-equipment"] description: "Excavation equipment" topic_path: "engineering" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadheader" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Excavation equipment ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Roadheader.jpg" caption="A typical roadheader"] ::

A roadheader, also called a boom-type roadheader, road header machine, road header or just header machine, is a piece of excavating equipment consisting of a boom-mounted cutting head, a loading device usually involving a conveyor, and a crawler travelling track to move the entire machine forward into the rock face. |author = Dr. Helmut Schneider |title = Criteria for Selecting a Boom-Type Roadheader |work = Mining Magazine |publisher = The Mining Journal, Ltd |page = 183 |date = September 1988

The cutting head can be a general purpose rotating drum mounted in line or perpendicular to the boom, or can be special function heads such as jackhammer-like spikes, compression fracture micro-wheel heads like those on larger tunnel boring machines, a slicer head like a gigantic chain saw for dicing up rock, or simple jaw-like buckets of traditional excavators. | url = https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/tunnel/ | title = Tunnel Virtual Team - Questions and Answers from Ask the Expert | access-date = 2006-09-15 | date = 2006-08-01 | publisher = US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration

Roadheaders are typically powered by electric motors, to avoid issues with carbon monoxide from Diesel exhaust fumes.

History

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Dosco_mk2a_roadheader.JPG" caption="A Dosco mk2A roadheader"] ::

The first roadheader patent was applied for by Dr. Z. Ajtay in Hungary, in 1949.

Types

Cutting Heads:

  • Transverse - rotates parallel to the cutter boom axis
  • Longitudinal - rotates perpendicular to boom axis

Uses

Roadheaders were initially used in coal mines. The first use in a civil engineering project was the construction of the City Loop (then called the Melbourne Underground Rail Loop) in the 1970s, where the machines enabled around 80% of the excavation to be performed mechanically.

They are now widely used in such as tunneling both for mining and municipal government projects, building wine caves, and building cave homes such as those in Coober Pedy, Australia.

On February 21, 2014, Waller Street, just south of Laurier Avenue collapsed into an 8m-wide and 12m-deep sink-hole where a roadheader was excavating the eastern entrance to Ottawa's LRT O-Train tunnel. A similar incident occurred in June 2016, when a sink-hole opened up in Rideau Street during further construction of the tunnel, and filled with water up to a depth of three metres. The CBC reported that one of Rideau Transit Group’s 135-tonne roadheaders was in a part of the tunnel where the flooding was the deepest. Three roadheaders were used in the construction of the O-Train.

Projects utilizing roadheaders

  • Boston's Big Dig | url = http://www.masspike.com/bigdig/background/tjacking.html | title = MTA - Tunnel Jacking | accessdate = 2006-09-15 | publisher = Massachusetts Turnpike Authority |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20060902113722/http://masspike.com/bigdig/background/tjacking.html |archivedate = 2006-09-02}}
  • Ground Zero Cleanup | url = http://newyork.construction.com/features/archive/2003/0307_Cover2.asp | title = Reconstruction : Port Authority on Schedule with Restoration of PATH Service | date = July 2003 | publisher = McGraw_Hill CONSTRUCTION | work = New York Construction | accessdate = 2006-09-15
  • Addison Airport Toll Tunnel |url = http://www.auca.org/month/project0998.html |title = American Underground-Construction Association's Featured Project |date = September 1998 |publisher = American Underground Construction Association |accessdate = 2006-09-15 |url-status = dead |archiveurl = https://archive.today/20130414062245/http://www.auca.org/month/project0998.html |archivedate = 2013-04-14
  • Fourth bore of Caldecott Tunnel | url = http://www.contracostatimes.com/contra-costa-county/ci_15718144?source=rss&nclick_check=1 | title = Caldecott fourth bore big dig starts today in Orinda | date = 2010-08-09 | publisher = Contra Costa Times | accessdate = 2010-08-09
  • Malmö City Tunnel
  • O-Train Line 1, Ottawa

References

References

  1. "Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Handbook". Department of Transport.
  2. (2014-02-21). "Road collapse leaves 8-metre wide sinkhole at tunnelling site". CBC News.
  3. (2016-06-18). "City to investigate why shutting off water took 2 hours after sinkhole occurred". CBC News.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

engineering-vehiclesmining-equipmentexcavating-equipment