APPENDIX A
STATEMENT OF TASK
National Research Council
Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems
Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources
Advanced Drilling Technologies
The committee is expected to evaluate the technical and scientific feasibility of advanced drilling and related technologies. The committee will examine concepts for new mechanical and nonmechanical drilling applications including advances in knowledge of the tool-rock interaction, will identify potential opportunities for research, and will make recommendations in a report on the scope and direction needed to realize these opportunities for improved methods for drilling rock. The committee will restrict its recommendations to specific research opportunities and avoid general advocacy of greater expenditures on drilling research.
The committee will consist of 8-10 experts drawn from the engineering and scientific disciplines associated with the topic, including geotechnical engineering, rock mechanics, soil mechanics, material sciences, geology and geophysics, mechanical engineering, and drilling technology.
The committee will meet about four times over the course of a one-year period. Included among the committee meetings will be a workshop to which 20-25 additional experts will be invited. The workshop will be an opportunity for the committee to raise preliminary findings and opinions for discussion among a larger group of experts and to elicit novel or unconventional ideas for penetrating rock. The workshop will not produce a separate report; results of the workshop will feed into the committee's final report.
