Geotechnical investigations are required for determination of subsurface conditions. These information are vitally demanded underground structures engineering.
These studies have been carried out for various projects such as off-shore projects, dams, subways, factories, residential and industrial structures, roads, tunnels and deep excavations.
The Geotechnics department has been establishes to provide following services.

• Deep Excavation
Population growth and limits of urban areas are the most important reasons to construct high rise buildings. Providing enough parking spaces for these structures raises the need for deep excavations.
Excavation with stable slopes is not always possible and, hence, the vertical trenches with supports are inevitable. Supports for these trenches include: nailing, soldier piles, anchoring and micro piles.
Our experienced experts have involved deep excavations in design and supervision of many projects for trench supports with different systems.

• Geotechnical and Geological Engineering
This section owns all essential equipment for exploring, drilling and field tests activities including:
Pressure Meter, CPT, SPT, in-situ shear test, Vane shear test, plate load test, dynamic plate load test (LWD), large and small in-situ density test, field permeability tests (Lefranc, Lougeon), geophysical tests (Seismic, Electric methods), grouting test, and etc.

• Material’s Quality Control
Geotechnical Investigation needs Standard Laboratories Tests and analysis of material strength. P.O.R owns a fully-equipped central laboratory and more than 15 local laboratories.
Central Laboratory is equipped with all equipment required for physical and mechanical tests on soil, rock, concrete, asphalt, and aggregates and chemical tests on soil and water. Some important tests are: triaxial test on rock and soil, direct shear test on rock and soil, unconfined compressive test on rock and soil, Loss Angles test, filter test, point load test, Brazilian test, tension test apparatus (100 ton) and Quality control.

• Ground Improvement
Ground improvement is highly useful and practical for geotechnical problems in new projects as well as old structures. In recent years, I.E.C is focused on geotechnical ground improvement, especially in problematic soils.

• Pile Load Tests & Special Tests
Pile load test team started its activities in 2004 to control tensile and compression capacity of in-situ piles in coastal, structural and heavy industrial projects. This team has tested over 200 piles with various sizes. The maximum load in compressive test has been 1050 tons and the maximum load for tensile test was 400 tons.
Nail Tensile Tests and Micro-Pile Tests have been carried out in several projects.