Fault detected in girder span on Metro's Badarpur line

At a time when Delhi Metro is rushing to complete its Phase-II projects before Commonwealth Games, it has been forced to go for replacement of a girder on the Central Secretariat-Badarpur line after it developed a technical fault.

DMRC officials said they noticed stalling (peeling off of the concrete cover) of one pre-cast segment of the 37-metre long segment girder between pillar numbers 74 and 75 on this line last Sunday. "We have already started the process to bring down the entire girder span and will replace it with an available 37-meter girder span. The replacement will take us eight to 10 days and it will not affect the opening of this corridor,'' claimed Kumar Keshav, director (projects) of Delhi Metro.

He assured there was no reason to worry since such stalling takes place when such girder spans are fixed using pre-stressing force. "Such incidents may happen because of imbalance in the pre-stressing force. We will take the damaged segment to the casting yard and a new one will be cast. All the segments will be used elsewhere and that will not have any adverse impact on the progress of work,'' Keshav said.

Playing down the incident, DMRC officials said that similar incidents have been reported three times before and the problem was fixed successfully. But experts said that such incidents occur for three reasons. "You apply only that much of pre-stressing force which the pre-cast concrete can take. If the pre-cast concrete can't take the pressure, it means either the concrete is weak or the matching of segments while placing them has not been proper,'' said a civil engineer engaged in similar work.

He added that if the agency constructing the stretch already has a similar segment girder available, it can fix the problem in less time. Kumar said they will use the segment girder, which has been built for a similar stretch beyond Badarpur. "That will not delay our work,'' he claimed.