What are MWDs used for ? MWDs have two purposes: to control the drilling phases and to provide geomechanical/geological information on the terrain crossed by the drilling machine.

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How does it work ? A number of specific sensors are installed (or directly used if already present on the machine) on the drilling machine, and a recorder collects and stores this data as a function of depth every cm, in order to produce curves on the on-site recorder in real time. This data is then automatically transmitted to the cloud for specific data processing.

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What types of drilling machines can be equipped with MWD ? All types of machine (see photos of geotechnical, mining and foundation machines).

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Which drilling methods are best suited to MWD?  For geotechnical purposes, two drilling methods are particularly suitable - destructive rotary drilling with a tricone or equivalent, and the downhole hammer for hard ground.

 

What are the advantages of using MWDs for core drilling ? MWDs are regularly used in core sampling to understand how the core was extracted from the ground, and to explain certain anomalies in recovery rates or core conditions.
 

What are the main MWD parameters used ? MWDs are classified into two main families - interpretative parameters and corrective parameters (A5).the main interpretative parameters are Instantaneous Advance Speed (IAV),Rotational Torque (RT),Water Pressure (WP) and Reflected Energy (RE).the main corrective parameters are Pushing Pressure (PP) on the tool and Retention Pressure (RP).the main corrective parameters are Pushing Pressure (PP) on the tool and Retention Pressure (RP).

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What is the use of MWD in geotechnical engineering ? MWD can be defined as a continuous qualitative in-situ test, which also has the advantage of not having any “refusals” like a static or dynamic penetrometric test. MWD is also widely used to search for voids (sinkholes) prior to construction in void and dissolution zones (gypsum, anhydrite, old mines or galleries). ​

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Why use MWDs for mining ? MWDs can be used to adapt a blasting plan to the nature of the terrain to be blasted (it is useless, even dangerous, to use explosives in fractured or empty zones).

 

What are the advantages of MWDs in mineral exploration ? MWDs help you to better understand the geology and tectonics of the deposit concerned.

 

What are the raw data formats of our equipment ? LIM offers its customers and the market the use of an open and documented compressed binary format (like a zip), which is described on the https://bor-form.at/en/.Les page. XML-type exchange formats do not seem appropriate to us for raw data, as the weight of an XML file corresponding to the same .BOR file is 10x to 15x larger. MWD raw data are often used by other software programs, and we recommend importing original .BOR files directly without going through the intermediate stage of XML exchange formats (AGS or DIGGS).