Support of unstable wedges along the Platamon railway tunnel under construction, in northern Greece

In this paper, support measures obtained with the RMR classification method were used for estimating the support capacity of wedges found in relatively shallow tunnels. This was done for the Platamon railway tunnel, in northern Greece, which is at present, under construction. According to our investigation, the safety factors, which were calculated using the above mentioned support measures, were much higher than the theoretically needed safety factor. In cases where the height of the wedges is much greater than their base and the rockmass quality is very poor, the proposed RMR support measures could be introduced. In these cases, additional techniques, which include steel ribs and shotcrete (together with rock bolts), could be used.