Ground-Penetrating Radar Applications for the Assessment of Airfield Pavements

Abstract

Growing volumes of aircraft traffic and the introduction of heavier aircraft are significantly impacting airports around the world. Pavement management systems are being relied upon heavily to monitor pavement condition, forecast performance, and plan for timely maintenance activities. The most widely used tools for maintenance and rehabilitation management for airfield pavements have been the falling weight deflectometer and dynamic cone penetrometer. However, these commonly used tests do not provide adequate information with respect to the thicknesses of individual layers within a pavement system. The layer thicknesses must be known in order to backcalculate the structural capacity using nondestructive test results. Supplementing these commonly used test procedures with core samples is disruptive, costly, and time consuming. Rapid, nondestructive techniques for assessing the pavement surface, base, and sub-base layer thicknesses are needed. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has shown some promise in this area. The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has completed a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project with Pulse Radar, Inc., to develop a GPR system for airfield/road pavements. The system currently under evaluation at ERDC consists of multiple antennas with frequencies ranging from 100 MHz to1 GHz. This paper will describe the Pulse Radar system in detail, show data acquired with the system, and discuss the accuracy of the system.