On Land
Over Water
Sonic Drilling is the latest addition to Soil Engineering’s in-house capabilities.
It provides a further approach to ground investigation, additional capabilities in borehole formation, and a new system to augment our instrumentation and monitoring programmes. Delivering rapid sampling and hole progress, and an alternative approach to borehole flushing and contamination control, Sonic Drilling is potentially an underappreciated tool in your project’s suite of techniques.
How does Sonic Drilling work?
Utilising high-frequency, low-amplitude vibration to disaggregate material in front of the bit face, the sonic drilling system penetrates obstructions in a totally different manner to any impact or rotary process. With a different approach to flushing and fluid control to conventional drilling methods, sonic drilling affords a key alternative in sampling potentially contaminated ground. To find out what the most appropriate solution is for your project, speak to our expert team.
Why choose Sonic Drilling?
- Ability to overcome obstructions in dense granular or highly clastic cohesive material. Natural or anthropogenic, the system is not concerned.
- Ability to drill dry. With not needing to flush ahead of the coring barrel, the sonic drilling system is able to mitigate cross contamination within strata in a completely different manner to conventional methods.
- Speed of progress. If rapid hole formation for an overall site model is key, sonic drilling may hold the answer. Recovering a higher quality sample than conventional openhole drilling, sonic drilling can provide a helpful compromise between fully destructive and conventional sample drilling.
- Accommodating traditional techniques. Sonic drilling can still accommodate the use of SPT testing and retrieval of high quality undisturbed samples.
- Adaptability. Our twin-head drilling rigs can switch from sonic drilling to rotary coring in moments. This maximises productive time, and avoids the need to mobilise a second rig to site. More economical, more data for the same money.
Managed through a dedicated department within Soil Engineering, but collaborating with our UK-wide project delivery teams, our sonic section are able to cover the whole country from our core operating bases. Our team of experts will advise you as to the suitability the technique for your particular site and project needs. They’ll also choose the optimal rigs for your setting, based on size, access and depth requirements.
Previous Experience
Soil Engineering have successfully deployed sonic drilling techniques in a wide range of strata across the country. Utilised to overcome frequent obstructions in dense granular strata, the techniques has become an established standard when we works on road projects in the highlands of Scotland. The ability to undertake high-speed hole formation whilst still recovering samples has proven an advantage when undertaking rapid site profiling in London. Flexibility of technique, switching from sonic sampling to rotary coring, has proven beneficial on road projects across the north of England.
