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  Design of porous tunnel for ecosystem protection in High Speed Two railway in UK

  The C2 Contract of HS2 covers the route from North Portal of Chiltern Tunnels to Brackley and passes through the ancient woodland Sheephouse Wood. This site of special scientific interest includes large colonies of the rare and protected Bechstein’s bat. Design aspects of UK's largest-ever porous-tunnel structure (~900m long) to protect the bats from high-speed trains running at 360km/h, the Sheephouse-Wood-Bat-Mitigation-Structure, is presented. Designed to comply with very strict but often conflicting requirements imposed by the licensing and planning authorities, the porous-tunnel structure comprises a series of large prefabricated concrete arch profiles to span over the HS2 and East-West-Rail conventional railway tracks (23m span & 11m height), placed at distances to form large apertures for natural ventilation of smoke during fire event. To protect the superstructure from train derailment, in situ concrete supports are integrated with a combined emergency walkway and robust kerbs. Mesh infill FRP panels are proposed in the formed openings for smoke dissipation and to prevent bats for entering the tunnel. Aerodynamic analyses are carried out to assess the impact of trains’ turbulent air speed on bats' flight paths and detailed fire analysis to determine tunnel's structural adequacy. The results confirmed a viable and innovative solution.

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