Development of the Quality Management System for Borehole Investigations: Part 1—Quality Assurance and Quality Control Methodology for Hydraulic Packer Testing

A quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) system for the hydraulic packer tests has been established based on the surface-based investigations at JAEA’s underground research laboratories in Mizunami and Horonobe. The established QA/QC system covers field investigations (data acquisition) and data analysis. For the field investigations, the adopted procedure is selection of a test section based on a detail fluid logging and checking with tally list, followed by inspection of test tools such as pressure transducers and shut-in valves, etc., test method selection using a “sequential hydraulic test” for deciding appropriate method, and finally data quality confirmation by pressure changes and derivatives on a log-log plots during testing. Test event logs should also be described during testing for traceability. For the test data analysis, a quick analysis for rough estimation of hydraulic parameters, and a detailed analysis using type curve and/or numerical analyses are conducted stepwise. The established QA/QC system has been applied to the recent borehole investigations and its efficiency has been confirmed.