Geotechnical surveys are aimed at understanding the behaviors and properties of earth and foundations. These surveys include soil sampling, soil mechanics, and subsurface investigations.  They are necessary to evaluate the foundation of structures, such as tailings storage facilities and earthen dams, and are required for their proper management. Information such as soil or material type is crucial to inform the design and decide on execution of work necessary to manage changes in the terrain or foundation. Investigations are also utilized to monitor changes in the geology, or to evaluate failure probabilities of potential geological risk areas. An example of this is in mine tailings dams, where a change in geology could indicate a risk for potential failure. Another use case on mine tailings ponds is during the critical reclamation stage, identifying the compaction rate of specific tailings deposits.Â
Use Cases
HELIX can venture to locations that are difficult to evaluate and can be equipped with the tools needed to gather critical data while ensuring human safety.
Ground Penetrating Radar Survey
GPR works by detecting the conductivity within the ground, and so is useful for detecting clays, soil layers, saturation in soils, structures, underlying metal pipes, and cavities/void spaces.
Earth Sampling Tools
Soft material samples are collected by HELIX robots using a piston sampler and stored on board the robot in a sample magazine.
Digital Vane Shear Tool
Shear strength tests are particularly valuable in mining sites as the data is needed to derive soil bearing capacity, design retaining walls, or to evaluate the stability of slopes and embankments.
Digital Cone Penetrometer
Copperstone Technologies uses a proprietary cone digital piezocone penetrometer (CPTu) designed to be deployed from HELIX robots.
Geotechnical Surveys
Geotechnical surveys include soil sampling, soil mechanics, and subsurface investigations.