World's first boring and blasting machine rolls off the production line at a manufacturing base of China Railway Science & Industry Group in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, on August 1, 2026. Photo: Courtesy of CRSIC

The world's first boring and blasting machine (BBM) officially rolled off the production line at a manufacturing base of China Railway Science & Industry Group in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, on Saturday, filling the gap in integrated tunneling equipment for tunnels with complex geological conditions, the Global Times learned on Monday.

Jointly developed by Tsinghua University and China Railway Science & Industry Group (CRSIC), a subsidiary of China Railway Group Ltd, the equipment integrates the strengths of two mainstream tunneling methods - tunnel boring machine (TBM) and the drilling and blasting method - offering a novel technological solution for long and large tunnel construction under complex geological conditions. 

It represents a major breakthrough in China's high-end underground engineering equipment sector through industry-university-research collaboration, China Railway Science & Industry Group said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Monday.

The construction of long and large tunnels has long been plagued by complex geological challenges, including large deformation of soft rock, severe rock bursts, and water and mud inrushes, domestic news portal stdaily.com reported Monday. The traditional drilling and blasting method poses significant safety management pressures with limited construction efficiency, while hard-rock TBMs lack adaptability in unfavorable ground conditions, making it difficult to combine the advantages of both methods. 

The R&D team adopted an innovative hollow cutterhead structure. Through the coordinated operation of the hollow cutterhead and the central cutterhead, the machine can flexibly switch between multiple operating modes, the CRSIC said in its statement. "The BBM can seamlessly alternate between modes - including pre-blasting followed by excavation, pre-excavation followed by blasting, and full-face boring - thus offering flexible adaptability to a wide range of field conditions."

According to China News Service, the birth of the BBM will solve a world-class challenge in complex tunnel construction. Qin Pengxiang, a research fellow with the State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering at Tsinghua University, said that lab results showed that the excavation efficiency will be increased by 30 percent compared with traditional TBM.

The machine is also equipped with multiple proprietary technologies that significantly enhance its comprehensive tunneling capability in complex tunnels, according to the company. Its retractable side cutters allow flexible adjustment of the excavation cross-section and improve the efficiency of in-tunnel relocation and passage. The adaptive telescopic tail shield accommodates various segment specifications, enabling variable-diameter lining assembly in rock burst and large-deformation sections to ensure support structure stability. 

An explosion-proof shield buffers blasting impacts, effectively protecting the main machine and internal precision components. A dual independent belt conveyor system sorts and transports excavated muck and aggregates separately, optimizing the construction organization process.

China is accelerating the development of a modern infrastructure system, advancing the coordinated deployment of six major infrastructure networks encompassing transportation, energy, and water conservancy. This BBM breaks away from the conventional design approaches of similar domestic and international equipment, with the entire machine and its core components featuring fully independent intellectual property rights, domestic news portal stdaily.com reported on Monday, citing an official with the Wuhan Municipal Science and Technology Innovation Bureau.

The BBM will be deployed in a project to build a pumped storage hydropower station for engineering demonstration purposes.

The research team will continue to optimize the BBM's performance based on field measurement data collected on-site, stdaily.com reported.