Sonic drilling offers quality control and non-destructive advantages to sensitive infrastructure sites

摘要

The use of conventional, circulatory air rotary and fluid rotary, cased and uncased drilling methods in the vicinity of sensitive infrastructure can have deleterious effects on the ground conditions surrounding and supporting structures and on the structure itself. Also, using these conventional methods provides little information about the condition of the subsurface during geotechnical applications. Sonic drilling measurements and samples can be used to evaluate actual conditions. This paper discusses the properties of sonic drilling and explores case histories of geotechnical applications for the advancement of boreholes within vulnerable structures and on sensitive sites for several recent infrastructure projects - a tunnel and railroad project, a dam grout curtain project, a bridge micropile exploration project and a tunnel instrumentation project. Cases will discuss the advantages realized when applying sonic drilling techniques demonstrated superior accuracy, quality control, efficiency, productivity, penetrability, waste minimization and adaptability when drilling adjacent to or within existing infrastructure.