Ground
Ground investigation overview
With increasing economic and legislative pressure to manage the risks of development projects, there is a growing need to determine subsurface conditions before starting construction work.
In the UK, flagship projects such as the London 2012 Olympic Park and the Thames Gateway development are mostly using land that has been previously developed which inevitably increases the project risk without comprehensive site investigations.
Left: EM61 deep penetration metal detection survey of 400 sq m former industrial
site: plot shows reinforced concrete pilecaps (in red).
Right: resistivity survey, UK: investigating cause of settlement
Right: resistivity survey, UK: investigating cause of settlement
Geophysical methods rapidly characterise a site, enabling highly targeted and cost effective intrusive site investigation (SI) methods such as drilling, cone penetration testing (CPT) and trial pitting to verify results. Geophysics can be extremely effective in mapping buried hazards, contaminants, obstructions and artefacts from previous land usage to enable targeted intrusive ground investigation and remediation planning. Applications don’t just include detection of man-features; engineering geophysics is also useful for ground investigation to determine shallow geology and detecting natural features such as karstic solution features and caves. Geophysical methods can provide a range of geotechnical information on ground properties and parameters.
Fugro Aperio offers a wide range of geophysical techniques enabling the right method to be selected for a particular site.
Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) survey of reclaimed coastal site in Dubai.