Barcelona Orbital Highway B-40.
Olesa de Montserrat-Viladecavalls

The construction of the new Barcelona Orbital Highway Barcelona will join the town of Abrera with Mataró through Granollera, Terrassa and connecting the regions of the two Vallés (West and East) with the Baix Llobregat and Maresme.

Section Olesa Montserrat - Viladecavalls is 6.1 km length, and runs between the east bank of the Llobregat River Turnpike C-16, crossing the Sierra d'En Ribes by tunnel.

The origin of the section coincides with the beginning of the tunnel in the west entry of the Olesa tunnel.

At the exit of the tunnel, two false tunnels are arranged to reduce the visual impact of the excavation. Then, cross the Sant Jaume by a viaduct. Once out of the tunnel is the only trace overpass over the highway, as the other cross-connections are solved by variants of roads under the viaducts provided.

Then two ravines are crossed with individual structures and at kilometer point (KP) 3,050, a composting plant and artificial esplanade formed with material extraction, to cross the Torrent de Sant Miquel by a new structure.

The section to the junction with Highway C-16 (end of section) runs along the hillside parallel to said torrent. At this junction is projected Viladecavalls link, designed in conjunction with the adjacent section, Viladecavalls - Terrassa, one of the main factors, the need to connect the new highway through collector roads, besides rearranging different roads in the area on a total length of about 4 km corresponding to the C-16.

The section type of the highway it's made, except the junction with Highway C-16, for three lanes of 3.5 m, with 2.5 m shoulders interior, exterior and two berms 1m and 0,75 m.

Olesa tunnel has a length of 1,300 m, with a excavation section of 178 m2. Execution was performed using NATM to whose definition finite difference calculations were performed with the program FLAC3D. 4 sections were considered whose characteristics are given in the following table:

Cover (m)	Advance (m)	Bench (m)	Truss	Fck (N/mm2)	Supportt thickness(cm)
<40	1.50	3.00	HEB-160/1.5m	35	30
40-65	1.20	2.40	HEB-180/1.2m	35	35
65-80	1.00	2.00	HEB-200/1.0m	35	40
80-106	1.00	2.00	HEB-160/0.5m	40	45