Tosti, Fabio, Alani, Amir M., Benedetto, Andrea, Ciampoli, Luca Bianchini, Brancadoro, Maria Giulia and Pajewski, Lara (2017) A comparative investigation of the pavement layer dielectrics by FDTD modelling and reflection amplitude GPR data. In: Tenth International Conference on the Bearing Capacity of Roads, Railways and Airfields (BCRRA 2017); 28-30 Jun 2017, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

The present work focuses on the application of the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technique on a flexible pavement structure for the assessment of the layer dielectrics. Two air-coupled GPR systems, with antennas operating at 1 GHz and 2 GHz central frequencies have been used for testing and simulation purposes. The ef-fectiveness of the combination of i) the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) technique for the simulation of the GPR signal, and ii) the GPR reflection amplitude technique, for the estimation of the dielectrics of the pavement layers, has been analyzed. Three steps of processing are proposed and the results are compared each to one another. In the first stage, the signal has been simulated using design project data for the cross-section investigated and dielectric permittivity values for the (design) construction materials, derived from the litera-ture. In the second stage, the dielectrics have been computed by the signal collected within a real-life flexible pavement. Both the two-way travel time and the reflection amplitude techniques were performed. The third step was focused on analyzing the accuracy of the reflection amplitude method combined with the optimized simulation of the GPR signal. The results demonstrate potential on the use of the proposed approach with re-spect to the application of the reflection amplitude technique to the real-life GPR signal.

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