Geotechnical Site Investigation

Benthic’s PROD is the world’s most versatile seabed drilling and geotechnical testing system. First of its kind in operation, PROD has a proven track record with successful geotechnical site investigation projects worldwide—including deployments in ultra-deepwater with the most challenging seabed conditions—and industry-leading productivity.

PROD is controlled remotely by computer and operates directly on the seabed, reducing human interaction with heavy mechanical equipment making it inherently safer than a traditional drillship. Its ability to switch dynamically between drilling and testing tools in a single deployment or borehole, yields immediate gains in efficiency, especially in deep water. PROD’s innovative design provides a highly stable and controlled platform, enabling Benthic’s geotechnical team to make precise tool adjustments resulting in extremely accurate data collection.

Unlike most other systems that surcharge the seabed where testing is performed, Benthic’s seabed drill has legs and broad feet that contact the seabed away from the tooling zone of influence.

Working with our industry partners, Benthic provides geotechnical in situ testing services using single-push seabed CPT systems. Systems offered range from mini coiled tubing deployed systems to 100KN ROSON underwater piezocone. Benthic can provide in-house expertise for Cone Penetrometer Testing (CPT) with real-time data available to clients on board vessel, together with comprehensive post-test reporting.

We offer industry-standard seabed CPT rigs, including standard 5cm sq and 10cm sq cone penetrometers. Depending on seabed conditions, these rigs can typically achieve a penetration depth of up to 20m below the seafloor.

In addition to PROD’s onboard piston coring capabilities, Benthic can provide industry-standard gravity corers, gravity piston corers and jumbo piston corers (JPCs). Operating as free-fall samplers, these corers are triggered when the corer shoe and piston are at the seafloor.

Depending on your project objectives, we can use long or short corers to acquire reasonable quality samples with a relatively stationary piston. Typical corer lengths are 3m, 6m, 12m and 15m.

Benthic can deploy a range of industry-standard box corers with typical dimension of 0.5m x 0.5m x 0.5m. Once a sample has been recovered on deck, we can perform a range of tests on-site, including vane and mini penetrometers testing (cone, ball, or T-bar), as well as more sophisticated testing where required. That allows us to characterize the seabed soil’s undrained shear strength and residual shear strength profiles, providing valuable data for the positioning and design of pipelines and other subsea structures.

Benthic has been developing the activated rock catcher, or ARC, for over 12 months now. We designed this patent-pending catching system to bridge the gap between the capabilities of the sediment barrel and the rotary core barrel.

As all companies are challenged to retain core in some soil conditions once sampled, we’re exceedingly pleased to bring this game-changing, innovative tool to the industry for Benthic client’s exclusive benefit!

PROD’s ability to switch between piston sampling, rotary coring and in situ testing maximizes productivity and provides certainty in achieving your data objectives, on time and on budget. As a result, PROD has consistently proven to be the most productive system for gathering geotechnical data.