The Feasibility of Rapid Soil Investigations Using High-Speed, Earth-Penetrating Projectiles.

Terminal depth of penetration of spherical projectiles in transparent granular media

“…Young provides a scaling factor [Eq. (7)] to accommodate lighter projectiles down to approximately 2 kg. In our tests, Eq.…”

“…Penetrators, as a means of probing soil properties, have also been used in geotechnical engineering [7,12,33,36]. Additionally, craters caused by hypervelocity impact of meteors, has been of interest to both terrestrial and planetary geologists [23].…”

“…Electro pneumatic projectile accelerator (air-gun), designed and constructed at Polytechnic Institute of NYU[7] …”

Viking Lander: subsurface water analyzing probe. [Mars subsoil]

“…These data would be relayed to the Lander while that vehicle was still above the tail section of the probe, so that a very high probability of recovery of deceleration data occurs, even if communications failures, etc., should later interfere with system operation. It is possible to form a very good model of the surface stratigraphy from this record as analysis of over a thousand penetrating vehicle tests on earth has shown [19]. Any information gained by the Lander-based instruments on surface density and composition or seismic indications of crystal composition will be used to improve this naodel.…”

A Model to Predict Strain Rate Dependency of Dry Silica Sand in Triaxial Compression

“…The applications of HSR loading can be related to blasting [1], earthquakes [2], mine blasts [3], aircraft wheel loading [4], dynamic compaction [5]; in situ subsurface explorations [6][7][8], pile driving and rapid load testing of piles [9], and projectile penetration [10,11]. These applications provoke transient loading characterized by large strains in the soil over very short periods of time.…”