Hussein H. Karim; Ammar M. M. Al-Qaissi
Abstract
Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is frequently used in pavement engineering for road pavement inspection. The main objective of this work is to validate nondestructive, quick and powerful ...
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Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is frequently used in pavement engineering for road pavement inspection. The main objective of this work is to validate nondestructive, quick and powerful measurements using GPR for assessment of flexible and rigid pavement thicknesses and detection of rebars and joints within the rigid pavement. To achieve this work, in-situ simulation model (1.2 m 1.2 m in dimension), consists of three layers (sub-base, flexible and rigid pavement), was made and surveyed by GPR using three antennas (250, 500 and 800 MHz). The interpretation results of 250 MHz antenna identify and assign the flexible pavement as one layer without identifying the rigid pavement layer. With the 500 MHz antenna, the flexible pavement appeared as one layer with identifying the rigid pavement boundaries. While using 800 MHz antenna, both flexible pavement and rigid pavement layers were clearly identified as in the in-situ simulation model. Therefore, the 250 and 500 MHz antennas have much more penetration, but much lower resolution. Besides, rebars and joints were clearly appeared in both 500 and 800 MHz antenna. By correlating in-situ model with radar GPR data, the results show thickness deviations (percentage error) on the order of 1% for surface layer and about 2% for both binder and rigid layers. Applying 500 and 800 MHz antennas perpendicular to steel reinforcement within rigid pavement, the rebars (with dielectric constant equal to 13.6 with velocity equal to 8.1 cm/ns) and joints (with width 0.025 m) appeared in the radargram. From the precise calculation of thickness, it can be concluded that an excellent correlation between field model and radar data.
