Commuting is tough enough on a normal workday without the added hassle of a flooded tunnel on your way to or from work. With that in mind, how do subway systems around the world deal with this natural threat?
The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has a solution in the form of a giant inflatable plug that will seal off subway tunnels and stop water from flowing throughout the subway system into stations and other subway lines.
"The tunnel plug is an innovative and groundbreaking technology that can protect subway tunnels from flooding," said John Fortune, Program Manager in S&T's Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA).
Dubbed the Resilient Tunnel Plug (RTP), S&T, in conjunction with ILC Dover, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and West Virginia University, demonstrated the inflatable device at a recent event held in Frederica, Delaware. The uninflated plug integrates seamlessly into a subway tunnel without impeding the flow of normal train traffic, but can be quickly inflated to stop water from rushing through the tunnel and remain inflated to withstand the incredible pressure of restrained floodwaters.
The image of the plug in TFA looks like the plug uses a lot of duct tape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @10:22AM
TFA says the plug passed a test of 21 days of continuous use. Anything I fix with duct tape usually needs to last much longer than that ;-)