2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London. Soil erosion is a major problem in civil engineering. It is involved in bridge scour, meander migration, levee and dam overtopping, internal erosion of earth dams, surface erosion of embankments, and cliff erosion. The best way to predict the erodibility of a soil is to measure it directly on a site specific basis by testing samples in the laboratory or by in-situ testing in the field. The borehole erosion test or BET is a new in-situ soil erosion test proposed to measure the erosion of the walls of a borehole while wet rotary drilling takes place. The increase in diameter of the borehole as a function of time and for a given flow velocity in the borehole is measured with borehole calipers. The result is a profile of soil erodibility as a function of depth. Tests in clay and in sand conducted at the National Geotechnical Experimentation Sites at Texas A&M University are presented.
