The construction of an 18km long submerged tube tunnel between Germany and Denmark is currently underway with the goal of reducing travel time from 45 minutes to just 7-10 minutes. This tunnel, known as the Fehmarnbelt tunnel, is being built by companies such as Femern A/S, Rambøll, Arup, and TEC and will be the longest and deepest submerged tube tunnel in the world to combine rail and road transportation. Once complete, it will connect Rødbyhavn in Denmark with Fehmarn in Germany, offering the shortest route between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe.
The construction process for this massive project required a great deal of materials including 360,000 tons of reinforcing bars which is nearly 50 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower’s metal structure. The site on the Danish side was equivalent to 373 football fields in size and up to 70 ships were involved in the dredging operation for the 18 km long tunnel. In total, approximately 12 million m3 of soil was removed from the seabed during construction.
The submerged tube tunnel consists of a total of 99 sections -79 standard sections and ten special sections. Each standard section weighs around 73,000 tons and is about 217 meters long, 42 meters wide and ten meters high while smaller special sections are almost half as long but slightly wider and taller than standard sections. These prefabricated tunnel sections are transported on barges then submerged at depths up to 40 meters before being sealed on the seabed.
The estimated cost of constructing this significant infrastructure project is $1.2 billion and it’s expected to be completed by
