Boring (earth)

Boring is drilling a hole, tunnel, or well in the earth.

Boring is used for a various applications in geology, agriculture, hydrology, civil engineering, and mineral exploration. Today, most earth drilling serves one of the following purposes:

Unlike drilling in other materials where the aim is to create a hole for some purpose, often the case of drilling or coring is to get an understanding of the ground/lithology. This may be done for prospecting to identify and quantify an ore body for mining, or to determining the type of foundations needed for a building or raised structure, or for underground structures, including tunnels and deep basements where an understanding of the ground is vital to determining how to excavate and the support philosophy. Drilling is also used in vertical and inclined shaft construction.

When drilling in stone, one must pay particular attention to the type of material. There are three different classifications of drill bits used for drilling into stone: soft, medium, and hard. Soft formation rock bits are used in unconsolidated sands, clays, and soft limestones, etc. Medium formation bits are used in dolomites, limestones, and shale, while hard formation bits are used in hard shale, mudstones, granite, limestones and other hard and/or abrasive formations.

Soft ground drilling can be undertaken using a rotary auger or wash boring techniques, while rock drilling often use methods such as NMLC which allow for recovery of a core of material which can be examined to determine the strength, degree of weathering, understanding of any how intact the rock is (RQD) and identify any discontinuities or other planes of weakness.

Testing of the material in boreholes is also possible. In soft ground the standard penetration test can be used to determine the strength of the material. In rock in-situ stress testing using hydrofracturing or overcoring, Acoustic Televiewer can be used to map discontinuities to determine their orientation. It is also possible once a borehole is complete to measure the permeability. Samples of water and material are also taken for examination and lab testing.

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