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A technical masterpiece
Contractor: Femern Link Contractors (FLC), Copenhagen, Denmark
The Danish island of Lolland and the German island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea are separated by the Fehmarn Belt strait. Yet, the countries are now set to be connected by a 18.1 km long underwater tunnel. While the Femern Link Contractors (FLC) consortium is responsible for overall construction, MEVA is heavily involved in the megaproject through providing products and services.
Fehmarnbelt Tunnel to connect Denmark and Germany
The Danish island of Lolland and the German island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea are separated by the Fehmarn Belt strait. Yet, the countries are now set to be connected by a 18.1 km long underwater tunnel. While the Femern Link Contractors (FLC) consortium is responsible for overall construction, MEVA is heavily involved in the megaproject through providing products and services.
As northern Europe‘s biggest infrastructure project, the world‘s longest immersed tunnel and longest combined rail and road tunnel, the Fehmarn Belt fixed link is a superlative-defying structure. Four separate passageways – two for cars with two lanes each, and two for trains, plus a service passageway – will cut the travel distance between Copenhagen and Hamburg by 160 km and the travel time by two hours. The journey between the tunnel portals at Rødbyhavn and Puttgarden will be ten minutes by car and seven by rail. Scheduled to open in 2029, the tunnel is designed for a minimum service life of 120 years.
Construction method
In all, 89 precast concrete tunnel sections are due to be cast directly in the newly created production facility on the Danish side (Rødbyhavn) on six production lines fed by two purpose-built concrete batching plants. After curing, the tunnel sections are driven out on concrete rails, parked in one of three dry docks and sealed with steel bulkheads. The dock is flooded and the now floating tunnel elements carried out to sea by tugboats, lowered, and joined together on the seabed. A technological masterpiece.
Each of the 217 m long and 42 m wide standard elements are assembled from nine segments. Placed at regular intervals between the standard units are ten special elements.
MEVA‘s involvement in this project
- Ten special tunnel elements
- Six abutments for three dry docks
- Floating gate

Special tunnel elements
The ten special tunnel elements (SPEs) are being cast on production line 6 with the help of MEVA formwork expertise. These service elements with a length of 39 m are both wider (45 m) for stopping bays and higher (13 m) with an additional basement level to house the mechanical and electrical (M&E) installations for tunnel operation and maintenance. To ensure exact alignment of the carriageways and tracks, these SPEs – each weighing 21,500 tonnes – must be positioned correspondingly lower in the seabed. They are cast in three sections (in casting pits) with formwork assembled by MEVA and its partner company Rúbrica: first the bottom trough (Rúbrica), then the internal walls and slab for the M&E level along with the internal walls of the upper level for the roads, track and service shaft (all MEVA), and finally the upper external walls and slab (Rúbrica).

Abutments for dry dock portals
Three dry docks serve to link the production area with the open sea. They can be drained or flooded to a level of approx. 20 m to enable floating and up to 45 m wide tunnel elements to be tugged through the 50 m wide portals into the sea. The six abutments for the three dry dock portals were constructed using MEVA systems that included MT 60 shoring towers, JumpForm climbing formwork, and specially designed assemblies.

Floating gate
A floating gate fits exactly between the abutments to enable drainage and flooding of the docks. It is positioned in the dock portal by tugboats and, fitted with four heavy-duty pumps, serves to pump seawater into or out of the dock via eight chambers. This operation takes five days. The mobile gate is used to alternately close off the portals to the three dry docks, depending on the particular production line from which finished elements are available. Like the dry dock abutments, the 50 m wide, 21 m tall and 6,000-tonne floating gate was manufactured several months in advance.
Photos © Femern A/S
MEVA systems:
- Specially designed formwork solutions
- 3D formwork design
- MT 60 shoring tower
- JumpForm climbing formwork
- Mammut 350 wall formwork
- Mammut XT wall formwork
- AluStar wall formwork
- AluFix wall formwork
- MevaDec slab formwork
- SecuritBasic safety platform
- Triplex bracing system
Project:
Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, Rødbyhavn, Denmark
Contractor:
Femern Link Contractors (FLC), Copenhagen, Denmark
Website:
www.femern.com
Engineering and support:
MEVA Schalungs-Systeme GmbH, Haiterbach, Germany
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