GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING

There are few geotechnical surveyors who are as versatile or flexible as GEOSCIENCE ENGINEERING AND LABORATORY SERVICES. 

Hard work, integrity and passion are what make for a brilliant drilling company, and Borehole has those qualities in spades. To find out about our services in greater detail, visit our SERVICES page.

Take a further look through our website to get more of a sense of our company ethos, and to find out why we’ve become so popular for geotechnical site investigations across the Gulf, Lebanon and abroad.

Site Investigation and Characterization

Each site investigation and characterization project is planned for the specific requirements and objectives of that particular project, and may consist of:

• Conducting desk study and field reconnaissance
• Identifying, mapping, analyzing and controlling geotechnical hazards
• Field sampling via drilling, coring, test pitting, Shelby Tube sampling, Osterberg cell sampling, SPT tube sampling, and ground freezing techniques
• Conducting SPT (Standard Penetration Test), CPT (Cone Penetration Test), SCPTu (Seismic Cone Penetration Test with pore-water pressure measurement), PMT (Pressuremeter Test), DCP (Dynamic Cone penetrometer Test), SCP (Static Cone Penetrometer Test), shear vane, field load test, groundwater measurement, field permeability test, hydraulic fracturing, and other testing techniques as required
• Conducting Standard, advanced, and custom-designed lab tests on field samples or lab specimens prepared in the lab
• Installing geotechnical instruments and monitoring field performance
• Developing geological, geotechnical, and hydrogeological conceptual models for soil, rock, ore, discontinuities, and groundwater — interconnected with databases of material properties and chronological instrument data
• Investigating failures and evaluating the performance of geo-structures (Forensic Engineering)
• Offshore Geotechnical Site Investigation

Foundations Analysis and Design

Geoscience Engineering and Laboratory Services provides:

• Bearing capacity and deformation analysis for footings, rafts, piles, caissons, anchors, pile-rafts, diaphragms, shear-keys, and floating foundations
• Analysis of complex soil-structure and soil-structure-liquid interactions 
• Machine foundations
• Pile foundation analysis, design, and construction inspection
• Pile load tests, plate load tests, embankment load tests, proof rolling, and interpretation of the test results for developing the site and practice-specific designs and verification of designs based on Observational Method
• Instrumentation and monitoring

Slope Stability Analysis and Landslide Remediation 

• Stability analysis of natural and human-made slopes including excavations, embankments, dams, dikes (dykes), dumps and fills
• Design of shallow and deep open excavations, open pit mines, waste dumps, and high embankments including structural stability of rock masses as well as the general stability of soil, rock, ore, and waste masses
• Advanced coupled stress-deformation, seepage, seismic, and limit-equilibrium analysis
• Design of alternative instability prevention and landslide remediation measures (45 methods available)
• Instrumentation, monitoring, and Observational Method based analysis and design

Instrumentation and Monitoring

• Planning and designing instrumentation and monitoring programs for the specific objectives of the projects
• Geotechnical instrumentation for open pit mining 
• Geotechnical instrumentation for underground mining
• Geotechnical instrumentation for tailing dams, waste rock dumps, and landfills 
• Installing instruments, logging data, and interpreting the collected data for evaluating geotechnical safety and performance, as well as, for using with Observational Method based design and construction
• Installing and monitoring a wide range of instruments such as piezometers, inclinometers, tiltmeters, deformation bench-marks, settlement cells, seepage meters, geophones, load cells, pressure cells, crack meters, and other instruments as needed
• Developing new instruments as needed for specific applications

Excavations and Retaining Systems Analysis and Design

• Evaluation of short-term stability of unsupported vertical and sloped excavation walls
• Design and monitoring of short-term shoring for excavations
• Analysis and design of long-term retaining systems such as concrete gravity walls, concrete cantilever walls, concrete diaphragm (slurry) walls, modular blocks, secant and tangent piles, steel sheet walls, timber walls, gabions, masonry walls, mesh-shotcrete stabilized soils, and Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) retaining walls
• Evaluation and control of excavation-induced deformations to adjacent buildings and infrastructures, ground loss, and groundwater seepage
• Instrumentation, monitoring, advanced numerical modeling, and Observational Methodbased analysis and design

Ground Improvement

• Site investigation and characterization and development of site-specific knowledge required for optimizing ground improvement procedures
• Geotechnical ground improvement techniques for open pit mining 
• Design of geo-structures on, within, or with problematic soils and rocks
• Design and evaluation of ground improvement for soft soils, soft or fractured rocks, swelling and shrinking soils, collapsible soils, Karstic soils, liquefiable soils, thaw-unstable soils, frost-susceptible soils, saline and acidic soils, and other problematic ground conditions (as part of soil engineering)
• Advanced materials testing services for ground improvement and soil treatment
• Instrumentation, monitoring, advanced numerical modeling, and Observational Method based analysis and design

Advanced Modeling and Analysis

 We use advanced analytical analysis, numerical modeling, and laboratory modeling for:

• Seepage analysis and groundwater control
• Modeling of load-deformation, creep, and relaxation behavior of geomaterials, soil structures, soil-structure interactions, and soil-liquid interactions under various static, dynamic, and thermal loading and boundary conditions
• Staged construction modeling, Observational Method, and calibration of computerized models for predicting short-term and long-term behavior and stability
• Scenario-based risk analysis, geotechnical stability, and performance evaluation
• Risk analysis and development of site-specific and project-specific factors of safety and Limit States Design (LSD) load and resistance factors
• Optimizing the design of artificial geomaterials such as soil-cement, RCC (Roller Compacted Concrete), plastic concrete, grout, shotcrete, light-weight fill, and recycled waste fill

Pavement Design

• Pavement superstructures for rigid and flexible pavements in residential and industrial applications
• Pavement structures incorporating geogrid or other soil reinforcement materials
• Mining haul roads and temporary dirt or gravel roads
• Concrete block pavements
• Helipads and airfields in problematic soils
• Proof rolling of paved roads

Forensic and Remedial Geotechnical Engineering

• Failure and mal-performance investigations including cracks, settlements, heaves, fire-induced and flood-induced damages, slope failures, foundation failures, and other geo-structure instability or general failures 
• Advanced materials testing services to develop the accurate analytical knowledge required for forensic geotechnical engineering projects
• Design of remedial solutions such as underpinning, mud-injection, grouting, dewatering, and construction of berms and retaining structures
• Forensic geotechnical engineering and expert witness services for litigations, insurance claims, and arbitration settlement procedures 
• Special designs for remediation or prevention of slope failures (45 methods available)