In mid-August, following a blast at the tunnel face, the Yinkongshan Tunnel, the first tunnel exceeding five kilometers on the Hefei-Wuhan High-Speed Railway's Hubei section, was successfully completed, marking a significant milestone in the project's tunnel construction. The railway, stretching from Hefei in the east to Wuhan in the west with a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour, serves as a crucial link connecting the eastern and western segments of the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed rail corridor along the Yangtze River. It stands as a key project for deepening the Yangtze River Economic Belt development strategy and enhancing the nation's comprehensive three-dimensional transport network during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Recently, as part of the "High-Quality Development China Tour" media activity, reporters visited the construction site of the Hefei-Wuhan High-Speed Railway to observe how China Railway Construction Corporation is leveraging smart construction technologies to connect the new artery between Anhui and Hubei provinces, gradually transforming the blueprint for regional coordinated development into reality.
Survey and Design: Achieving Optimal Solutions with a Single Click
"In the past, building a BIM (Building Information Modeling) model for a hundred kilometers of railway took over a week; now it takes just one minute," said Lei Xin, an engineer at the Digital Intelligence Division of China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Siyuan Group"). With a simple click, different route options are automatically generated on the screen. As Lei Xin adjusts the design parameters, the design model updates in sync. She explained, "The comprehensive route selection system of the intelligent survey and design platform incorporates various design control factors, including geology, signaling, power, and environmental protection, enabling it to automatically generate route plans and recommend high-value options. This moves complex engineering design from 'trial-and-error based on experience' to 'intelligent optimization'."
This advancement is underpinned by an integrated "air-space-ground" intelligent survey data collection system. Fei Liang, Deputy Chief Engineer at Siyuan Group's Survey Institute, noted that the Hefei-Wuhan High-Speed Railway is the company's first pilot project for intelligent high-speed rail surveying. The team has utilized emerging surveying technologies such as BeiDou navigation, oblique photography, LiDAR, and drone-based measurement to rapidly acquire large-scale three-dimensional spatial data, enabling multi-source data integration and modeling. These comprehensive intelligent survey technologies have effectively shortened survey cycles, reduced manpower requirements, and bridged the data gap between survey and design phases.
The intelligent survey technology has provided a more scientific basis for decision-making on complex engineering aspects of the railway, including 18 crossings above existing railway lines, passages beneath ecologically sensitive areas, and the construction of the 14.7-kilometer Dabie Mountain Tunnel. The geographic and geological information system developed from the "air-space-ground" integrated intelligent survey technology has already been applied to more than 60 engineering construction projects. The related achievement, "Intelligent Design Scenarios for Domestic Land Transport Overall Plans," has been selected as one of the Central State-owned Enterprises' high-value strategic artificial intelligence scenarios in the "Hundred Industries, Intelligent Scenarios" initiative.
Precast Yard: Automating Production with Intelligence
At the Jinjiazhai precast yard of the Hefei-Wuhan High-Speed Railway project operated by China Railway 11th Bureau Group, reporters observed robotic arms moving with precision and an intelligent spray system activating automatically. Task instructions displayed on the large screen at the intelligent control center continuously refresh in sync with the production rhythm, as the task of prefabricating 563 box girders progresses at a rapid pace. Instead of the bustling crowds typical of traditional construction sites, data streams now flow through the cloud.
Sun Wei, the head of the Jinjiazhai precast yard at China Railway 11th Bureau Group, explained that the yard has independently developed an intelligent precast yard comprehensive management system. Acting as the "smart brain," this system utilizes digital twin technology, the BeiDou satellite system, and chip-based positioning devices to track the operational status of key objects in real time, providing each box girder with a "full lifecycle record" from steel reinforcement processing to concrete curing.
The "smart brain" precisely directs on-site operations, while intelligent robots work at full capacity. An operator's light touch on a device activates a white robotic arm several meters away to begin welding, with sparks flying and arcs flashing. This not only reduces weld quality fluctuations caused by manual work but also mitigates safety risks associated with welding flash and sparks. With the automatic welding robots, the required workforce has been reduced from three workers to one. Amid the hum of machinery, an automated mold polishing and spraying robot has compressed a process that previously required six workers and four hours down to one worker and two hours, significantly improving operational efficiency.
From the "sharp eyes" of precision detection to the "dexterous hands" of efficient operations, a series of digital and intelligent achievements are continuously driving upgrades in the precast yard's production capacity. Sun Wei stated that the next step is to further deepen technological innovation, integrating smart construction throughout the entire project lifecycle to inject sustained momentum into the high-quality construction of the Hefei-Wuhan High-Speed Railway.