In civil engineering, a cutting or cut is where part of a hill or mountain is cut out to make way for a road or rail line. It is in cut and fill construction used to keep the route straight and/or flat, where the comparative cost or practicality of alternate solutions (such as diversion) is too prohibitive. Contrary to the general meaning of cutting, a cutting in construction is mechanically excavated or blasted out with carefully-placed explosives. The cutting may only be on one side of a slope, or directly through the middle or top of a hill. Generally, a cutting is open at the top (otherwise it is a tunnel). A cutting is (in a sense) the opposite of an embankment.
The word is also used in the same sense in mining, as in open cut mine.
History
The term cutting appears in the 19th century literature to designate rock cuts developed to moderate grades of rail lines.[1]
See also
References
- ^ Alexander Smith (1875) A new history of Aberdeenshire
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