Assembly of China’s first fully prefabricated metro station was completed in Qingdao, Shandong province. All of the metro station's main structure, internal structural beams, slabs and columns are pre-cast. The first phase of Qingdao Metro Line 6, at 30.47 kilometers long with 21 stations, is financed by the Qingdao Metro Group and is being built by the state-owned China Railway No 4 Engineering Group Co (CREC4). Liu Quanwei, Chairman and General Manager of Qingdao Metro Line 6 Co, said that within 10 months, the technicians made breakthroughs in realizing full prefabrication of beams, slabs, columns and walls in its subway stations.
Qingdao's first metro line opened on December 18, 2016, after Qingdao Metro Group Co was set up in March 2013. Wang Kaifa, Director of the CREC4 project, said the new technology can save four to six months in building a metro station and reduce the number of workers by 80%. It can also save 800 metric tons of steel and 800 cubic meters of wood, and reduce construction waste by some 60%, slashing carbon emissions by 20%, he said.
The innovative technology will be used in six stations of the line’s first phase, which started its construction in December 2019. CREC4 technicians also independently developed tooling equipment including a 160-ton intelligent gantry crane plus integral separated trolley. By using three-dimensional laser scanning and building information modeling (BIM) technologies, they can control the assembly accuracy of prefabricated components within a millimeter, achieving precise design, production and assembly, the China Daily reports.
