The Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar Metro Rail Project is a new mass-transit rapid transit system in Gujarat, West India. The project is being implemented by Metro Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) and aims to meet the city’s growing population while providing commuters with a better transport system.
The total length of the metro’s first phase is 39.3km, with 33.3km of elevated section and 6 kilometers underground. The metro will connect suburbs in Ahmedabad along east-west and north-south axis, and the route will also be extended to Gandhinagar in Phase-2.
The construction of the first phase, comprising 32 stations connecting the four corners of the city, has been in progress since 2015. Being expected to operate in 2020, the first trial run of the metro line is scheduled for January 2019.

Steel sonic logging tubes for concrete integrity tests

For the first phase of the Ahmedabad metro, Dextra was involved in supplying its CSL solution Sonitec for the 6-kilometer long viaduct. Sonitec is Dextra’s sonic logging tube system for Cross-hole sonic logging tests. CSL method allows the contractors to verify the concrete integrity in D-walls, bored piles, drilled shafts, barrettes or in concrete piles. Sonitec helps facilitate the assembly and installation of long tubes in reinforcing cages by its Instant Connection characteristic. Thanks to its large bell-mouth, the tubes can be easily connected seamlessly.

The MRT Pink Line & Yellow Line are elevated mass rapid transit line being built and operated by the BSR joint venture (BTS Group Holdings, Sino-Thai Engineering and Construction STEC, and Ratch Group RATCH) in Bangkok, Samut Prakan, and Nonthaburi Provinces, Thailand.

The MRT Pink Line monorail will be 34.5 kilometers long and have 30 stations. It will connect the northern districts of Bangkok and Nonthaburi with 5 mass transit lines that run along a key east-west transportation route.

The 30.4-kilometer Yellow Line will have 23 stations and will connect 6 other mass transit lines. It will provide mass transit along the heavily congested Lat Phrao road and Srinagarindra road corridors.

Dextra was involved in these 2 MRT line extension projects by providing Bartec splicing systems. More than 440,000 pieces of the couplers, size 16-32mm, were installed inside connecting slabs to connect guideway beams.

In addition, the contractor chose Dextra’s Headed Bars as an alternative to rebar hooks to avoid steel congestion in severely reinforced areas such as beam-column connections. Around 530,000 small headed bars were supplied to the construction sites.

The MRT Pink Line is expected to be operational by June 2022, with the Yellow Line following a year later.

Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) is a gigantic infrastructure project by Indian Railways in the Himalayan Mountains, designed to provide rail connectivity to Jammu and Kashmir valleys. This project aims to enable access to the rail network from all parts of the country and connect faraway areas with the rest of India, in response to Prime Minister’s vision of a New India by 2022.

The project is divided into three sections – the 25 km Udhampur-Katra, the 129 km Katra-Qazigund and the 118 km Qazigund-Baramulla tracks. Parts of the lines have already been completed and made operational.

For this massive project, Dextra supplied 3,000 sets of Self-Drilling Rock Bolts to stabilize loose rock mass after excavation.
The Self-Drilling Rock Bolt is a bolting solution for unstable ground conditions and fractured rock formations. The loosening of the rock strata is prevented by drilling a hole in the rock, placing standard sacrificial drill bit and a hollow bar (made of steel or FRP): cementitious grout is then injected into the hollow bar.

As the mega infrastructure project nears completion, the USBRL will link Jammu with Kashmir, opening up a new page for the Indian transportation system.

Bangkok’s MRT Orange Line is one of the planned rapid transit lines of the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand (MRTA). The main purpose of this 39.5-kilometer railway line is to improve the connection between western, central and eastern parts of Bangkok, and consequently ease the Thai capital’s traffic congestion. This project is also part of Thailand’s plan to stimulate the national economy and improve the infrastructure.
The MRT Orange Line is separated into two sections: from Bang Khun Non to Thailand Cultural Centre, and from Thailand Cultural Centre to Min Buri – comprising 22 underground stations and 7 elevated stations.

Dextra GFRP Soft-Eyes for tunnel construction

For the Thailand Cultural Centre – Min Buri section, the contractor Joint-Venture of Italian-Thai Development and CKST opted for more than 40 units of Dextra’s turnkey solution for tunneling FRP Soft-Eye.
Being well-known for its unique cut-ability technology, Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) Soft-eyes facilitates break-ins and break-outs of the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM). This is in fact the best alternative to conventional steel reinforcement – which would require mobilization of additional manpower and equipment.

Dextra Sonitec for Crosshole Sonic Logging (CSL) tests

In order to verify the integrity of concrete in deep foundations, Italian-Thai Development, CKST JV and Unique Engineering have also chosen Dextra’s cross-hole sonic logging tubes – Sonitec. These CSL tubes are available in several diameters, and have been specifically designed for easy and fast handling to accelerate construction speed. Over 30,000 tubes have been delivered to the project as of March 2022.

Complete rebar splicing solutions applied for the metro’s D-walls

To optimize the reinforcement of the Diaphragm Walls (D-Walls), Bartec, one of Dextra’s mechanical rebar splicing systems, was installed. Thanks to its easy-to-install characteristic, Bartec helps accelerate the projects schedule and reduce inventory as the standard coupler can also be used for Position splices. More than a million of Bartec couplers have been delivered to the site.

Moreover, around 7,000 headed bars were applied at the end of the reinforcement bar as an alternative to hooks in congested areas of the structure.

For more information about our solutions available in Thailand, please contact our Bangkok office.

The Cairo Monorail is a two-line monorail rapid transit system in Cairo, Egypt, that is currently under construction. When the project is finished, the two lines will provide the first public transportation linkages from the New Administrative Capital and 6th of October City to the Cairo metropolitan area.

The 54-kilometer line between the New Administrative City and East Cairo will take 60 minutes, while the 42-kilometer line between the 6th of October City and Giza would take 42 minutes.

Dextra supplied more than 300,000 Bartec standard and bridging couplers for the connection of reinforcement bars. Bartec is simple to install and does not require professional skilled labor, which reduces labor on the job site, formwork costs, and increases job site safety.

Around 400,000 Bartec headed bars were also installed as a replacement for hooked bars in concrete members and connections.

Moreover, the project used Unitec bolted couplers in repair works for the connection of two rebars which have not or cannot be threaded.

The first stage of the system will open to the public in 2022, followed by a second stage in 2023.

The Forrestfield Airport Link is a rail infrastructure project lolcated in Perth, Western Australia. The 8.5km line will connect the existing Midland Line to Perth International Airport and further to the eastern suburbs. The project features two twin-tunnels bored with Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) which move up to 26 meter underneath the bed of Swan river, highways and Perth Airport, adding three new stations to the city’s transportation network: Belmont, Airport Central and Forrestfield.

For the tunnel boring packages, Dextra supplied a total of 10 GFRP Soft-Eyes between 2016 and 2017 (two for Airport Central Station, two in Abernethy, four in Belmont and two in Bayswater) to the contractor JV of Salini Impregilo and NRW Salini Impregilo. Soft-Eyes are rebar cages made mostly of Glass-Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GRFP) bars and some steel rebar. Soft-Eyes can be cut by the TBMs and allow faster equipment breakthrough, saving precious time while avoiding to damage the TBM heads.

Dextra also supplied a total of 65,000 Griptec connections for the station works. Griptec is distributed in Western Australia by Dextra’s partner InfraBuild Construction Services. They offer the complete service to the contractor: Cutting the rebar, preparing the bar ends with Griptec sleeves and bending them for final installation on site. This allows the contractor to achieve faster cycle times in rebar connection on site .

Sonitec, Dextra’s steel tubes for Crosshole Sonic Logging tests (to check concrete integrity in bored piles) were also supplied.

The Forrestfield-Airport Link will operate in 2022.

For more information about our solutions in Australia, please consult our Bangkok office

Brussels Metro is a rapid transit system that serves a large portion of the Brussels, Capital Region of Belgium. It consists of 4 conventional metro lines and 3 pre-metro lines.

Line 3 is a tram line that runs through the city center from Churchill in the south to Esplanade in the north, using the North-South Axis tunnel. The total route will be 10.3km long.

An 150m long new tunnel was dug underneath the Brussels North railway station to connect two existing underground tunnels. It was an important component of the new metro link.

Dextra supplied Sonitec, a tube solution that facilitates the integrity testing of foundations using the CSL testing method, to the construction site of Line 3. 13 kilometers of the tubes were installed in the 18m long pile cages.

The Sonitec system has been designed with the sole purpose of being easy to assemble and install in reinforcement cages.

The Cairo Metro is a rapid transit system in Greater Cairo, Egypt. It was the first of three fully-fledged metro systems built in Africa, as well as the first in the Arab world. It began service in 1987 as Line 1 between Helwan and Ramsis Square, covering a distance of 29 kilometers.

The Cairo Metro currently has 74 stations, 3 of which are transfer stations, with a total length of 89.4 kilometers as of August 2020. There are three operating lines in the system.

The new line, line 4, will run from Makram Ebeid Station to Police Academy Station near the Ring Road, with bored tunnels following Doctor Hassan El-Sherif Street and Ahmed El-Zomor Street. It will be 24 kilometers in total length.

Construction began in Q3 2019 and is expected to be completed in 2024.

Dextra has supplied 450,000 Bartec+ couplers and 42 GFRP soft-eyes for the reinforcement of the diaphragm walls.

Bartec+ is a mechanical splicing system with parallel threads for connecting concrete reinforcement bars with diameters ranging from 12 to 50 mm (ASTM #4 to #18). The threaded rebars are tensile tested at 90% of the rebar yield strength.

Dextra’s GFRP soft-eyes solution is an integrated turn-key solution that uses cut-able Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcement as an alternative to traditional steel rebars, allowing the penetration of Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) to pass through diaphragm walls with ease.