Mastering Micro-Pressure Wave Effects at the Katzenbergtunnel - Design of Measures, Prediction of Efficiency and Full-Scale Test Verification

This paper deals with the first and comprehensive application of a new prediction and assessment method on the new Katzenbergtunnel. The tunnel follows a new safety concept with two single track tubes and is strongly affected by the micro-pressure wave (MPW) phenomenon. Thus, appropriate MPW countermeasures were designed in the early construction phase. At this stage, the effects could only be predicted by model scale tests and simulations. During the final homologation tests, the values were measured in full scale and compared to the predicted ones. There was a good correlation so the tunnel could be opened for operation in December 2012 without any further modifications. In this paper the implemented countermeasures are presented. Also, some comparisons between predicted and measured values are shown. A detailed description of the assessment method which was adopted in a guideline of DB Netz AG is given in a separate paper.