DPM Technique for Digitization of Drilling Process for Profiling Ground Strength

Principal Investigator: Professor Zhong-qi Quentin YUE (Professor from Department of Civil Engineering)

This project is showcased in the second exhibition – Digitization in Innovation Wing Two

About the scholar

Professor Zhong-qi Quentin YUE

Teaching and research interests:
• Geotechnical engineering for urban development and land reclamation
• Methane-based theory of earthquakes and volcanoes and the Earth
• Soil material engineering
Email: yueqzq@hku.hk
Website: https://www.civil.hku.hk/pp-yuezq.html

Project information
Hong Kong is a mega city and is developed on the mountains and hillside slopes and nearby the sea. Hence, slope engineering is very important to Hong Kong sustainability and development against landslide hazards in Hong Kong. The University of Hong Kong has developed a system called Drilling Process Monitoring (DPM) technique.

This project has established a new generation of DPM based methodology for objective, efficient, continuous and accurate testing and evaluation of in-situ strength and quality profiles of geo-masses in ground. The DPM technique includes a hardware system for in-situ automatic monitoring and recording of drilling parameters in real time sequence and a software package for analyzing and presenting the digital data in time series.

DPM system can provide good knowledge of mechanical behavior of soil and rocks and their spatial variability to help the design and construction of geotechnical works including foundations, slope stability and tunnels. It can give us additional and factual data about the ground conditions to have better landslide hazard prevention in Hong Kong and Mainland China. DPM was the core technique/idea for winning further research grant of HK$7,382,020 from other sources in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Project video
Project images
The DPM system equips with the hydraulic rotary drilling machine and the pneumatic percussive rotary drilling machine to do in-situ ground investigation
The DPM system equips with the experimental drilling machine in the laboratory
Installation details of the DPM on an experimental drilling machine

The DPM contains transducers unit and data logger:

  • The transducers are installed to the drilling machine with ease.
  • The data logger controls the sampling of signals from the transducers.

After completion of all the monitoring in each day, the electronic data with sampling time are then downloaded into a personal computer for further processing and analysis.

Original DPM data of four roundtrips in one work day based on the hydraulic rotary drilling machine

The typical full drilling process associated with drilling machine in forming the 200 m deep vertical drillhole for ground investigation. The full drilling processes of four roundtrips (Nos.58 to 61) began at 09:32:50 a.m. and end at 03:44:38 p.m. of the same day.

Drill bit advancement with net drilling time and associated zoning result

The DPM algorithm discovered that the curve of bit advancement depth versus net drilling time is composed of linear zones with constant drilling speeds of homogeneous geo-masses and clear discontinuity interfaces. We have verified and validated that this discovery is of generality and applicable to many drilling machines, drill bits and many different geo-masses in Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Achievement of the Project
Enquiry / Feedback

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