About Itasca

”What happens if we make the tunnel wider and if it is situated at greater depth? How does the rock react if the tunnel is two tracks wide instead of just one?” The opportunity to work with modeling attracted Jennifer to stay in Luleå. Now she does her Master’s thesis work at Itasca.

Simulation of extraction sequence and reinforcement. When Jennifer Hellberg saw what type of thesis work Itasca could offer her heart skipped a beat!

- I am really interested in numerical modeling and twisted and turned that paper. But then I folded the piece of paper and put it away. I was supposed to do my Master’s thesis work at home here in Stockholm, Jennifer laughed.

Exciting thesis work

But the piece of paper was on fire in her pocket and after a couple of months, she unfolded it again and applied for the thesis work to tailor the tunneling under different conditions. This involved simulating the tunnel extraction as correctly as possible.

– I am investigating whether the shape and depth of tunnels affect how the rock mass fractures and which rock reinforcement is required. Perhaps the same conditions apply regardless of tunnel shape or depth? I will develop different graphs that show how the rock behaves as the tunnel advances, says Jennifer who thinks it is very fun to test different situations using the computer to solve the problem. The second phase of the work is to look at the rock reinforcement.

The metro attracts

It is also working with tunnels that interest Jennifer once the thesis is completed:

– A dream project would be to work with large tunneling projects, for instance, one of the new metro lines being built in Stockholm. One of these will run past my hometown Nacka, and I will be able to ride the metro to downtown Stockholm myself someday.