THE OOSTERWEEL CONNECTION, ANTWERP

The Oosterweel connection includes, among other things, the literal completion of the Antwerp ring road.The Oosterweel connection completes the R1 on the north side of Antwerp and thus turns it into a fully-fledged ring road. The ring road will be closed within the Oosterweel Knoop sub-project (3a).

The Oosterweel knot forms the connection between the Scheldt tunnel and the Channel tunnels. Where the Scheldt tunnel is a wide tunnel with 6 lanes next to each other, the Channel tunnel, on the other hand, consists of 4 stacked tunnel tubes. To achieve this, various tunnel shafts are weaving up, over and past each other within the Oosterweel knot.

In addition, the Oosterweel knot forms the connection between the port and the ring road. Access and exit ramps and grade-separated intersections will be realized for this purpose.

This makes the Oosterweel knot a beautiful and challenging piece of (geo) technology in which a cross-section of the whole looks very different every 50 meters.

GEO2 Engineering is involved in the geotechnical design, with a focus on deformations and bedding of the tunnel tubes, the geotechnical project management and the engineering of temporary structures to support WSP.