The ViWat - Engineering project is aiming to develop a protection concept for the eroding coastline of the western Mekong Delta. In order to plan the breakwaters and ensure their stability on site, the team has to determine and evaluate various subsoil parameters (shear strength, friction, etc.) in advance.

For this purpose, the scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT-IWG) together with their Vietnamese project partners carried out geotechnical exploratory drilling in early April 2022. The demanding drilling work was performed on a floating drilling platform (Fig. 1) at a distance of several hundred metres from the coastline. Drill cores were taken for laboratory tests and strength tests were carried out directly in the borehole (Fig. 2). In parallel, they also investigated the shear strength in the soil of the eroding mangrove belt (Fig. 3). The data obtained will be incorporated into the dimensioning of the structure during the further planning process.