Scientific Research Well Or The Leaning Tower of Bad Frankenhausen
28. November 2014
H Anger’s Söhne (HAS) is drilling a scientific research well for the geophysical exploration of the underground
On behalf of the state institute for environment and geology of Thuringia (TLUG: Thüringer Landesanstalt für Umwelt und Geologie), in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Applied Geophysics (LIAG), HAS is drilling a well at Bad Frankenhausen, Thuringia. The aim of this drilling is to pave the way for geophysical measurements that are supposed to find out more about the sequence of rock formations.
The city of Bad Frankenhausen is one of the regions in Thuringia of which it is known that active leaching processes take place underneath them, which keep causing damages to buildings. Leaching processes means processes in which former subsurface saline deposits – created by the drying up of the Zechstein Sea, which covered the region more than 250 mio years ago – come into contact with water and precipitate consequently, which leads to a caving of the soil above it. This is why even today the region experiences many occurrences of subsidence of ground and sinkholes. The most prominent example is the 56 m high church tower of the Oberkirche, which by now has a greater tilt than the Leaning Tower of Pisa: deviation from the vertical of 4.06 m (as of June 2013; source: www.oberkirchturm.de).
The aim is to develop and examine the Zechstein sediments that are prone to leaching, down into the Permocarbon and the so called Kyffhäuser Südrandstörung, in order to gain information about the exact condition and the remaining thickness of the rock formation.
The access to these formations is granted by the well which HAS is currently drilling in close proximity to the church tower.
For further information please visit:
http://www.liag-hannover.de/en/home.html
http://www.oberkirchturm.de/html/schieflage.html (only in German)