Industries
Geotechnical
Applications:
- Characterizing geologic conditions affecting existing structures and buildings.
- Mapping sinkholes and assessing their risk.
- Locating conduits and cavities affecting stability of roads, levees, dams, bridges, and buildings.
- Characterizing geological conditions for pipeline routing.
- Determining pile lengths on existing structures.
- Inspecting abandoned mines.
- Performing nondestructive testing of elastic and concrete parameters of rock and soil.
Environmental
Applications:
- Detecting underground drums, tanks, and unexploded ordnance (UXO).
- Delineating trenches, lagoons, and excavations.
- Mapping landfill thickness and boundaries.
- Characterizing landfill materials and disposal extent.
- Detecting contaminant plumes and estimating migration directions.
- Locating drainpipes, septic systems, and other conduits.
- Detecting clay-liner leaks.
Construction
GeoSearches Inc. performs geological engineering surveys for the construction industry.
Applications (Foundation Survey):
- Using ground-based detection to find foundation defects.
- Determining foundation depth.
- Checking integrity occurrence of foundation plates.
Applications (Pile Survey):
- Determining pile length.
- Controlling pile defects (integrity and geometry).
- Controlling bored and soil-cement manufacturing.
Applications (Wall Survey):
- Determining thickness of bearings and walls.
- Detection of inclusions and voids (utility lines, reinforcement).
- Examining of affected zones in new construction.
- Detecting zones hazardous for construction (karst, holes, subsoil waters, nonsolid zones).
Oil & Gas
Seismic tomography, 3D seismic surveying, and seismic reflection are the most commonly used geophysical exploration techniques in the offshore and onshore petrochemical exploration industry. 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 in oil and gas exploration for several applications:
- Density tools measure rock porosity and density.
- Caliper tools measure hole diameter.
- Gamma-logging tools measure the radioactivity of the wall rocks in the borehole.
- EM tools measure wall-rock conductivity to inform on sulfide content, porosity, lithology, etc.
Engineering
We apply geophysical survey techniques to site investigations for civil engineering purposes.
Applications:
- Locating sinkholes and voids.
- Locating adits and mineshafts.
- Mapping bedrock depth.
- Mapping bedrock rippability.
- Mapping fractures and identifying weak zones in bedrock.
- Locating gravel and shallow sand deposits.
- Mapping groundwater surface and flow paths.
- Determining unknown foundation depths.
- Evaluating structures (weirs, bridges).
- Evaluating pavement (runways, roads).
- Detecting buried hazards on brownfield sites.
Archaeology & Forensics
Our services are used to locate and map:
- Archaeological and historical remains.
- Clandestine burials.
- Humanitarian sites.
- Rural sites.
- Urban sites.
- Historic buildings and churches.
