Investigation of Earthworks and Subgrades with Geophysical Equipment

In the construction of road projects, one of the main factors for the delay and increase in cost of road construction projects is huge variation of earthwork item and quantities. This caused the concerned authorities problems of budgetary, questioning of design documents, untrustworthiness on consulting offices, etc. Knowledge of the soil profile is essential to the engineering design of projects like roadways. A major risk for such projects is that the subsurface geology will differ from the assumptions made in the initial design and cost estimation stages of the project. Such miscalculations due to differing site conditions can be costly. One of such tools to get the desired effect is Geophysical Investigation, which is the application of principles of physics to study the subsurface environment (strata, material type, thickness, etc) of the earth. Thus, by studying the area of interest with respect to the required subsurface investigation, planning an exploration technique on a sound geotechnical basis using the test pits supplemented by geophysical technique would bring cost effective design with better accuracy, which will help the concerned authorities for budgetary.