Feature Article
Mar 14, 2024
Measurement While Drilling
Abstract
Every day in the United States, subsurface investigations use various boring machines and penetration rigs to advance boreholes in conditions varying from soft ground to hard rock. It's conceivable that, in the U.S., drilling contractors, consulting firms, and government agencies drill more than a million boreholes between 12 and 45 m deep annually, resulting in at least 32,000 km drilled each year (more than 7 times the width of the contiguous U.S.). For example, drilling-specialized companies using a 20-rig fleet will advance about 400 borings per month (7,300 m), totaling approximately 70 drilled km annually for geotechnical purposes alone. Unfortunately, very little useful information is retrieved from many of these borings if they are used for water wells, monitoring wells, and installation of various types of instrumentation. For soil profiling, boreholes typically yield discrete information at 1.5-m-depth intervals. In rock, however, stratigraphic profiling often relies on core cuttings that rarely extend more than 1.5 to 3 m into bedrock, except for cases where drilled shafts are planned for foundation design or for tunneling investigations.
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Published in print: Dec 1, 2023
Published online: Mar 14, 2024
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Jean Benoît, Ph.D., M.ASCE
Professor Emeritus, Civil Engineering, University of New Hampshire
Bruma Souza, M.ASCE
Ph.D. Candidate, Civil Engineering, University of New Hampshire
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Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.