The GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) conference in Hong Kong year 2016 marked the 30th anniversary of the initial meeting in Tifton, Georgia, USA on 1986. The conference has been being a bi-annual event and has been hosted by sixteen cities from four continents. Throughout these 30 years, researchers and practitioners witnessed the analog paper printout to digital era that enables very efficient collection, processing and 3D imaging of large amount of data required in GPR imaging in infrastructure. GPR has systematically progressed forward from “Locating and Testing” to “Imaging and Diagnosis” with the Holy Grail of ’Seeing the unseen’ becoming a reality. This paper reviews the latest development of the GPR’s primary infrastructure applications, namely buildings, pavements, bridges, tunnel liners, geotechnical and buried utilities. We review both the ability to assess structure as built character and the ability to indicate the state of deterioration. Finally, we outline the path to a more rigorous development in terms of standardization, accreditation, and procurement policy.

A review of Ground Penetrating Radar application in civil engineering: A 30-year journey from Locating and Testing to Imaging and Diagnosis

/pdf/storm-induced-marine-flooding-lessons-from-a-rgt0ibkb4t.pdf

Storm-induced marine flooding: Lessons from a multidisciplinary approach

Proxy records of Holocene storm events in coastal barrier systems: Storm-wave induced markers

Infilling stratigraphy of macrotidal tide-dominated estuaries. Controlling mechanisms: Sea-level fluctuations, bedrock morphology, sediment supply and climate changes (The examples of the Seine estuary and the Mont-Saint-Michel Bay, English Channel, NW France)

South Flank of the Yangtze Delta: Past, present, and future

Shelly cheniers on a modern macrotidal flat (Mont-Saint-Michel bay, France) — Internal architecture revealed by ground-penetrating radar

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01592975/document

Utility detection and positioning on the urban site Sense-City using Ground-Penetrating Radar systems

The paper gives an overview of a ground penetrating radar (GPR) experiment to survey debonding areas within pavement structure during accelerated pavement tests (APT) conducted on the university Gustave Eiffel’s fatigue carrousel. Thirteen artificial defect sections composed of three types of defects (Tack-free, Geotextile, and Sand-based) were embedded during the construction phase between the top and the base layers. The data were collected in two stages covering the entire life cycle of the pavement structure using four GPR systems: An air-coupled ultra-wideband GPR (SF-GPR), two wideband 2D ground coupled GPRs (a SIR-4000 with a 1.5 GHz antenna and a 2.6 GHz-StructureScan from GSSI manufacturer), and a wideband 3D GPR (from 3D-radar manufacturer). The first stage of the experiments took place in 2012–2013 and lasted up to 300 K loadings. During this stage, the pavement structure presented no clear degradation. The second stage of experiments was conducted in 2019 and continued until the pavement surface demonstrated a strong degradation, which was observed at 800 K loadings. At the end of the GPR experiments, several trenches were cut at various sections to get the ground truth of the pavement structure. Finally, the GPR data are processed using the conventional amplitude ratio test to study the evolution of the echoes coming from the debonded areas.

GPR Monitoring of Artificial Debonded Pavement Structures throughout Its Life Cycle during Accelerated Pavement Testing

Data interpretation over disbonded pavement structures still remains an open problem for the scientific community. In this paper, the details of a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) database, collected over artificial disbonded areas during an accelerated pavement testing at IFSTTAR’s carrousel, are presented. The database will be made available to the scientific communities. It may serve as a reference benchmark for both developing and testing the performance of various processing techniques for either interface detection and characterization, or monitoring purposes. In practice, GPR data have been collected over three artificial defects (tack-free, geotextile and sand-based), which were embedded between the top and the base layers. The data collection was organized in a two-stage experiments and covers the full life-cycle of the pavement structure. During the first stage that took place in 2012–13, data were collected at each of 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 250k and 300k loading cycles. The second measurement campaign was performed in 2019 and lasted up to 720k loading cycles. The database merges two types of existing radar technologies and configurations. Two stepped-frequency radar with 1.5 and 4.5 GHz as center frequency and two impulse radar systems, working at 2.6 and 1.5 GHz, were tested during this experiment.

Radar Database Collected over Artificial Debonding Pavement Structures During APT at the IFSTTAR’s Fatigue Carrousel

High frequency handheld GPR system was successfully used for the localization of voids and heterogeneities within fused cast refractory blocks that are used in glass furnace. Results provide possibility to enhance the geometrical configuration of the blocks in the furnace and so its lifetime can be improved. Comparisons of GPR results were carried out with ultrasonic measurements.

Christophe Norgeot

Papers

Shelly cheniers on a modern macrotidal flat (Mont-Saint-Michel bay, France) — Internal architecture revealed by ground-penetrating radar

Utility detection and positioning on the urban site Sense-City using Ground-Penetrating Radar systems

GPR Monitoring of Artificial Debonded Pavement Structures throughout Its Life Cycle during Accelerated Pavement Testing

Radar Database Collected over Artificial Debonding Pavement Structures During APT at the IFSTTAR’s Fatigue Carrousel

Localization of structural heterogeneities in refractory blocks using ground penetrating radar