Industries
Geotechnical
Characterize geologic conditions affecting existing buildings and structures.
Problems Solved:
- Map sinkholes and assess their risk
- Locate cavities and conduits affecting stability of roads, dams, levees, bridges, buildings
- Characterize geological conditions for pipeline routing
- Determine pile lengths on existing structures
- Inspect abandoned mines
- Non-destructive testing of concrete and elastic parameters of soil and rock
Environmental
- Detecting underground tanks, drums, and unexploded ordnance (UXO)
- Delineating lagoons, trenches, and excavations
- Mapping landfill boundaries and thickness
- Characterizing landfill materials and disposal extent
- Detecting contaminant plumes and estimating migration directions
- Locating septic systems, drain pipes, and other conduits
- Detecting clay-liner leaks
Construction
The main applications:
- Engineering geological surveys for construction
- Foundation survey:
- Ground-based detection of foundation defects
- Determining foundation depth
- Checking integrity occurrence of foundation plates
- Pile survey:
- Pile length determination
- Pile defects control (integrity and geometry)
- Bored and soil-cement piles manufacturing control
- Wall survey:
- Determining thickness of walls and bearings
- Detection of voids and inclusions (reinforcement, utility lines)
- Examination of new construction affected zones
- Detection of zones hazardous for construction (holes, karst, nonsolid zones, subsoil waters)
Engineering
The application of geophysical survey techniques to site investigations for civil engineering purposes. Common investigations include:
- Locate voids and sinkholes
- Locate mineshafts and adits
- Map bedrock depths
- Map bedrock rippability
- Map fractures and identify weak zones in bedrock
- Locate shallow sand and gravel deposits
- Map groundwater surface and flow paths
- Determine unknown depth of foundations
- Evaluate structures – bridges, weirs
- Evaluate pavement - roads, runways
- Detect buried hazards on brownfield sites
Oil & Gas
Geophysics in Oil & Gas Industry
Seismic tomography, seismic reflection, and 3D seismic surveying is the geophysical exploration technique most commonly used in the onshore and offshore petrochemical exploration industries.
Seismic reflection techniques are used to map the subsurface distribution of stratigraphy and its structure, which can be used to map out hydrocarbon plays. Seismic refraction parameters are used to calculate the density of the subsurface layers to determine such parameters as density, porosity and rock type.
Downhole geophysics tools are used within oil and gas exploration for several purposes:
- Density tools measure rock density and porosity
- Caliper tools measure hole diameter
- Gamma-logging tools measure the radioactivity of the wall rocks in the bore hole
- EM tools measure wall-rock conductivity - to inform on porosity, sulphide content, lithology, etc.
Archaeology & Forensics
- Archaeological & Forensic Applications
- Archaeological and historical remains
- Clandestine burials
- Humanitarian applications
- Rural sites
- Urban sites
- Historic Buildings and Churches
