Civil and environmental associate professor using drilling data to improve road safety
Published: Oct 27, 2025 1:45 PM
By Dustin Duncan
Understanding what lies beneath Alabama’s roads and bridges could soon lead to faster, more efficient infrastructure design, thanks to research led by Jack Montgomery, the Alice H. and John M. Ozier associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Montgomery and Brian Anderson, the Elton Z. and Lois G. Huff professor of civil and environmental engineering, have received a $249,998 contract from the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) through the Highway Research Center to study Measurement While Drilling (MWD), a technology that collects data in real time during drilling.
The two-year project aims to help engineers better understand soil and rock conditions — information that could reduce costly surprises and improve the design and safety of transportation infrastructure across Alabama.
“Designing roadways or bridges requires understanding the soil and rock below the ground surface,” Montgomery said. “Our hope is that this additional information will allow us to create better designs and more reliable infrastructure.”
Traditional drilling methods rely on collecting samples at specific depths for later laboratory testing, according to the project proposal. While accurate, that approach provides only a partial picture of subsurface conditions. Critical layers might be missed, and the process is slow, expensive and disruptive.
Montgomery said MWD uses sensors attached to drill rigs to continuously record data — including torque, pressure, vibration and penetration rate — creating a detailed profile of soil and rock characteristics throughout the drilling process.
“Traditional methods can only provide information where we collect a sample or stop to perform a test,” he said. “MWD allows us to get quantitative data about the drilling process and the materials we’re drilling through.”
Montgomery said although MWD has been used for years in oil and gas exploration and in some European geotechnical projects, its application in U.S. transportation engineering is still developing. He added that ALDOT already owns two instrumented drill rigs capable of collecting MWD data, but until now, that data hasn’t been integrated into design work.
Montgomery hopes his team’s research will help change that.
“Our team is interested in understanding both the benefits and challenges that come with implementing this technology in Alabama,” Montgomery said. “We’ll be leveraging the unique facilities that Auburn has to offer, like the geotechnical chamber at the Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory and our National Geotechnical Experimentation Site near Spring Villa. This will allow us to test the new technology in controlled conditions.”
By the end of the project, the research team plans to develop a data framework to store and visualize MWD results, identify correlations between MWD readings and established soil parameters and create preliminary training tools for ALDOT drillers.
“If we can show that MWD improves drilling quality and efficiency, we’ll help reduce uncertainty in geotechnical design,” Montgomery said. “That means safer infrastructure, fewer construction delays and better use of taxpayer dollars.”
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Jack Montgomery
