Extremely hard and abrasive rocks pose great challenges to the past and ongoing TBM projects by increasing cutter wear and reducing penetration rates. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to improve the performance of TBMs in those challenging grounds by either improving the capacity of TBMs or developing assisting rock breakage methods. This paper first highlights the challenges of hard and abrasive rocks on TBM tunneling through case studies. It then presents the development of hard rock TBMs and reviews the technologies that can be used individually or as assistance to mechanical excavators to break hard rocks. Emphases are placed on technologies of high pressure waterjet, laser and microwave. The state of the art of field and laboratory research, problems and research directions of those technologies are discussed. The assisting methods are technically feasible; however, the main challenges of using those methods in the field are that the energy consumption can be over 10 times high and that the existing equipments have robustness problems. More research should be conducted to study the overall energy consumption using TBMs and the assisting methods. Pulsed waterjet, laser and microwave technologies should also be developed to make the assistance economically viable.

极其坚硬和磨蚀性的岩石通过增加刀具磨损和降低穿透率，对过去和正在进行的TBM项目构成了巨大挑战。通过提高TBM的容量或开发辅助破岩方法，已经进行了大量的研究来提高TBM在那些具有挑战性的领域中的性能。本文首先通过案例研究突出了硬岩和磨蚀岩对TBM隧道的挑战。然后介绍了硬岩TBM的发展，并回顾了可单独使用或作为机械挖掘机帮助破碎硬岩的技术。重点放在高压喷水，激光和微波技术上。讨论了领域和实验室研究的最新技术，这些技术的问题和研究方向。辅助方法在技术上是可行的；然而，在现场使用这些方法的主要挑战是能耗可能超过10倍以上，并且现有设备存在坚固性问题。应该进行更多的研究来研究使用TBM和辅助方法的总体能耗。还应开发脉冲水刀，激光和微波技术，以使该援助在经济上可行。