{"id":2068,"date":"2026-09-29T17:11:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T09:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2026-09-29T17:11:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T09:11:55","slug":"cutting-wheels-for-trench-cutter-on-a-metro-station-diaphragm-wall-southeast-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/cutting-wheels-for-trench-cutter-on-a-metro-station-diaphragm-wall-southeast-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Wheels for Trench Cutter on a Metro Station Diaphragm Wall, Southeast Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Project Overview<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">A Class-A general contractor executing a 2-station package of an urban metro line in Southeast Asia approached APIE Foundation Equipment (China) Limited in early 2024. The diaphragm wall scope totaled approximately 18,000 m\u00b2, with panel depths of 42\u201348 m and wall thicknesses of 800 mm and 1,000 mm. The original hydromill, fitted with the OEM flat-tooth cutting wheels, was advancing at only 6\u20138 m\u00b2\/h in the mid-to-deep sandstone interlayers, and the crew was forced to change the complete wheel set every 900\u20131,100 m\u00b2 \u2014 a bottleneck that threatened the tunnel boring machine (TBM) handover date. The client sourced a replacement package of\u00a0<strong>cutting wheels for trench cutter<\/strong> from APIE to retrofit the existing hydromill module without buying a new machine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Challenge<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">The geotechnical report identified three critical layers: soft to medium clay (0\u201315 m), dense silty sand with gravel (15\u201328 m), and moderately weathered sandstone with UCS values of 60\u201390 MPa and localized basalt dikes reaching 110 MPa (28\u201348 m). The OEM flat-tooth wheel configuration suffered three compounding problems: rapid carbide tooth loss in the gravel-sand transition, gearbox shock loads when striking basalt inclusions, and verticality deviation exceeding 5\u2030 once the wheel entered rock \u2014 well above the 3\u2030 contract tolerance. The contractor needed a cutting wheel package that could transition across soft soil and hard rock without a mid-panel wheel change, while keeping verticality within 3\u2030.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Our Solution<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">APIE proposed a hybrid wheel package built around our proven hard-rock cutting wheel platform, matched to the client\u2019s existing hydromill gearbox (torque class 150\u2013180 kNm, output speed 0\u201320 rpm). The delivered configuration included:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Main cutting wheels with spherical hob (roller-cone) inserts<\/strong> for the rock section \u2014 a single hob requires \u22655 t downforce; a 1,000 mm-thick wheel carries 54 hobs with roughly one third (18 hobs) engaged in rock breaking at any time, giving a total rock-breaking pressure of ~90 t per wheel set, within the gearbox\u2019s 45 t per-side radial load rating.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Pick-drum cutting wheels with tungsten carbide bullet teeth<\/strong>\u00a0for the upper clay and sand sections, sized 640\u20131,200 mm to match panel thickness.<span class=\"source-item source-aggregated\" data-allow-html=\"\" data-group-key=\"source-group-5\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/products\/diaphragm-wall-machine-trench-cutter-with-spherical-hobs\" data-id=\"turn1fetch1\"><span class=\"source-item-num\" data-allow-html=\"\" data-group-key=\"source-group-5\" data-id=\"turn1fetch1\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/products\/diaphragm-wall-machine-trench-cutter-with-spherical-hobs\"><span class=\"source-item-num-name\" data-allow-html=\"\">apiepiling.com<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Reinforced side-cutting wheels (3 per side) and flapper-tooth roller structures<\/strong> engineered to outperform the OEM design in force distribution and to reduce guide-ring wear.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Matched casing cutter wheel inserts<\/strong>\u00a0for the guide-wall and joint-cleaning passes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">All wheels shipped with a tapered hexagonal output coupling for 30-minute wheel changeover on site, plus 15% spare hob and tooth inventory for the project duration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2071\" src=\"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/\u56fe\u72474-1-300x187.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/\u56fe\u72474-1-300x187.png 300w, https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/\u56fe\u72474-1-18x12.png 18w, https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/\u56fe\u72474-1.png 449w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\"><strong>Results &amp; Client Feedback<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Over the 14-week retrofit program:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Average advance rate in rock rose from\u00a0<strong>6\u20138 m\u00b2\/h to 11\u201314 m\u00b2\/h<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 a\u00a0<strong>40\u201350% productivity gain<\/strong> directly attributable to the spherical hob cutting wheel configuration.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Wheel service life extended from ~1,000 m\u00b2 to\u00a0<strong>\u22651,400 m\u00b2 per set<\/strong>, cutting wheel-change crane lifts and associated downtime by roughly 30%.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Verticality of the completed trench was held within\u00a0<strong>1\u2030<\/strong>, comfortably inside the 3\u2030 contract limit.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">Fuel consumption of the carrier power pack dropped to approximately\u00a0<strong>73 L\/h<\/strong> \u2014 a saving of over 20% versus the original wheel set.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;\">The client has since placed two repeat orders covering a second metro line and a drainage caisson project, and has listed APIE as an approved vendor for hydromill wear parts across its regional business units.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Overview A Class-A general contractor executing a 2-station package of an urban metro line in Southeast Asia approached APIE Foundation Equipment (China) Limited in early 2024. The diaphragm wall scope totaled approximately 18,000 m\u00b2, with panel depths of 42\u201348 m and wall thicknesses of 800 mm and 1,000 mm. The original hydromill, fitted with [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[153,385,569,574],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-construction-site","tag-trench-cutter","tag-underground-metro-construction","tag-cutting-wheels","tag-trench-cutter-cases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apiepiling.com\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}