In a strategic move, TDI-Brooks International, Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Gregg Drilling’s CPT cone manufacturing capability in Nacogdoches, Texas. The premises were secured the last week in May 2020, which includes offices, laboratory, machine shop and warehouse space where Gregg Drilling’s cone penetrometers are designed, manufactured and maintained. TDI-Brooks has also purchased assets houses there, including machinery, test equipment, and inventory to manufacture these cones.
This acquisition provides TDI-Brooks full design, manufacturing, maintenance, and calibration capabilities of specialized cones designed for our CPT-Stinger and gravity CPT (gCPT) used in offshore marine geotechnical programs. Purchase of these assets will allow TDI-Brooks to continue to offer a wide array of advanced Cone Penetrometer Testing capabilities, as well as to develop more new features and new tools.
Use of tools such as the cone penetrometer, combined with laboratory testing at TDI-Brooks, enables the identification of soil layers for offshore site characterization studies. This tool consists of a cone-tipped probe, or penetrometer, which when pushed into the soil collects cone resistance, sleeve friction and pore pressure data used for identifying soil type and profiling soil strength.
The CPT-Stinger installed in a JPC core-head, is deployed and triggered with the well-proven TDI-Brooks JPC process, allowed to free-fall ballistically to insert itself into the sediment like a JPC while constantly collecting and storing CPT data. Once fully embedded in the seafloor with the necessary resulting reaction force now available, the CPT-Stinger is programmed to extend a rod from inside the barrel deeper into the formation (like a stinger) at the standard ASTM (static) cone push rate.
