Preliminary results of a 2 GHZ horn antenna GPR on a pavement section in Portugal

Abstract

The use of a 2 GHz horn Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) with high speed data acquisition in road survey is a recent technique in Portugal, and is still in development. In this paper a description of this recent acquired equipment is presented as well as the basic principles of the method, the high speed GPR data acquisition and post-processing and modeling of GPR data. Preliminary results of layer-thickness of an asphalt pavement using GPR survey involving 35 510 scans are presented and compared with thickness results obtained from over 119 field cores obtained in the aim of the quality control of new pavement construction. The similitude of the global results of the two methods shows the efficiency of GPR. This GPR application to road survey is the beginning of a more vast research about non destructive methods applied to pavement quality control and to assess pavement conditions.