Enabling dynamic exploration targeting through sensing of the drilled environment
A natural gamma detector designed to operate within the active drill head allows an operator to ‘see’ the drilled environment in real time.
Drilling is vital to provide physical samples of rock hidden beneath the surface, but with conventional ‘blind’ drilling it can take many holes for an explorer to develop enough understanding of the buried geology and structures to fully define and test potential mineralisation targets.
The novel down-hole detector supported through MRIWA project M0509b registers the presence of naturally occurring radioactive elements within the volume surrounding a drill hole, providing a real-time proxy for lithology.
Integrated as a component of the MinEx CRC-developed RoXplorer drilling system, this technology could help support more effective dynamic decision-making during drilling, helping operators actively steer the drill head towards anomalous targets.
Read MRIWA report 509b for more details of this research.
Page was last reviewed 29 June 2023