Instrumented borehole drilling for interface identification in intricate weathered granite ground engineering

The successful application in drilling for HK simple weathered granite foundation has revealed its further use in instrumented drilling system as a ground investigation tool in the detection of other lithology formations, geohazards, underground water, and boundary of orebody. To expand the further use and test the accuracy in identification of formation, an R-20 rotary-hydraulic drill rig was instrumented with a digital drilling process monitoring system (DPM) for drilling in an intricate decomposed granite site. In this test ground, the boreholes revealed that the weathered granite alternately changes between moderate and strong. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the penetrating parameters, indicates the effective thrust force, rotary speed, flushing pressure, penetrating rate, and displacement of the bit fluctuate at ground interfaces. It shows that the parameters get a good response with the change of rock strength at the interfaces, which can reveal the change of the intricate granite formation. Besides, a variable-slope method has been established, for identification of dominative and subsidiary interfaces in the granite site. The result from a t-test shows that the confidence of the instrumented drilling system in identification of the geotechnical interfaces is up to 99%.