Deep frozen shaft with gliding liner system

Between 1979 – 1983 the frozen shaft portion of Voerde shaft with an inner diameter of about 6 m and an excavation diameter of 8.60 up to 10.7 m was constructed. The shaft had to penetrate about 600 m water bearing strata. This depth and the requirement of using a gliding liner system lead to the development of completely new methods of analysis and design. The new concept had to be transfered to the technical execution of the work. The paper describes the whole project and the design and construction methods. The procedure of excavation and building the shaft is reported together with the results of different measurements during the construction period.