The American University of Madaba

Faculty of Engineering - Civil Engineering

Department

Engineering Foundations Report

Name: Ali Khaled Al-Tarshah

Student ID: 1420029
Title of Project: Boreholes

Mark:
A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A
borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction
of water, other liquids (such as petroleum) or gases (such as natural gas), as part of
a geotechnical investigation, environmental site assessment, mineral
exploration, temperature measurement, as a pilot hole for installing piers or
underground utilities, for geothermal installations, or for underground storage of
unwanted substances.

A borehole is any hole drilled or dug into the sub-surface for the purpose of extracting
or investigating the material at that particular point. Commonly cylindrical the length
of the hole will always be several orders of magnitude greater than its width or
diameter.

Boreholes include any drilled onshore and offshore, for any purpose and to any depth.
This includes holes advanced to collect soil samples, water samples or rock cores, to
advance in situ sampling equipment, or to install monitoring wells or piezometers.
Samples collected from boreholes are often tested in a laboratory to determine their
physical properties, or to assess levels of various chemical constituents or
contaminants.

There are two main types of bore, open holes and cored holes and there are two main
types of drilling rigs, rotary and percussion.

Sometimes probe holes and trial pits are considered as boreholes. This is because they
provide similar information.

Borehole drilling has a long history. China (200 bc) used deep borehole drilling for
mining and other projects. Chinese borehole sites could reach as deep as 600 m .The
practice of well logging in boreholes dates to 1927, and was established in France.

The main purposes for drilling boreholes:

1. Shallow drilling for site investigation and construction e.g. Motorways

2. Mineral exploration, including sand and gravel

3. Drilling for water and water abstraction

4. Oil and gas exploration and extraction

 5. Monitoring.

Methods of drilling:

1. Hand auger or hand digging

2. Shell and auger rigs (as seen at the side of motorways) used for site
investigation

3. Small scale rotary drilling often lorry mounted

4. Hammer Air flush drilling for water supply

5. Offshore drilling from ships

6. Large rigs on large platforms both onshore and offshore.

A borehole record is a written description of the material that comes out of the ground
as a result of drilling a bore. Alternatively it may be electronically generated from the
properties of the rocks by lowering instruments down the bore.

Boreholes are useful both in geotechnical report. They provide site-specific

information that can help determine the geology and nature of the ground and can
help identify any apparent or potential hazards.

Information provided by boreholes:

Soil conditions – for construction

 Engineering properties – physical and chemical

 Contamination – natural & man-made

 Geology Shell and auger drilling

 Geothermal potential

 Structure

 Mining activity – deep & shallow

 The presence of natural cavities

 Presence of minerals – coal, oil, sand, gravel gypsum etc.

 Presence of water and monitoring its availability

 Hazards – finding presence or alleviation.

Borehole geophysics:

Borehole geophysics is the science of recording and analyzing measurements of

physical properties made in wells or test holes. Probes that measure different
properties are lowered into the borehole to collect continuous or point data that is
graphically displayed as a geophysical log. Multiple logs typically are collected to
take advantage of their synergistic nature--much more can be learned by the analysis
of a suite of logs as a group than by the analysis of the same logs individually.
Borehole geophysics is used in ground-water and environmental investigations to
obtain information on well construction, rock lithology and fractures, permeability
and porosity, and water quality. The geophysical logging system consists of probes,
cable and draw works, power and processing modules, and data recording units. State-
of-the-art logging systems are controlled by a computer and can collect multiple logs
with one pass of the probe.

Borehole-geophysical logging can provide a wealth of information that is critical in

gaining a better understanding of subsurface conditions needed for ground-water and
environmental studies. Geophysical logs provide unbiased continuous and in-situ data
and generally sample a larger volume than drilling samples.

Common geophysical logs include caliper, gamma, single-point resistance,

spontaneous potential, normal resistivity, electromagnetic induction, fluid resistivity,
temperature, flow meter, television, and acoustic tele-viewer.

Boreholes geophysical logging is used to guide the design of the borehole and its
completion (construction logging), to identify the lithological sequence and the
vertical and lateral variation in rock properties (formation logging), to identify the
fluid-bearing potential of the individual layers (fluid logging).

Also provide information on the borehole construction, monitor borehole

performance, and examine reasons for borehole failure, decline in yield, sand
pumping or water quality deterioration, identify the position and relative magnitude
of water inflows including pollutants ,provide information to correlate similar rock
and aquifer horizons from site to site, provide data to examine horizontal, vertical and
time varying water quality changes to identify fractures and fissures and distinguish
those that are groundwater-active.