Review of NDT assessment of road pavements using GPR

Abstract

The pavement structural condition is one of the main factors to be taken into account for pavement maintenance planning. Therefore, more efficient methods for pavement monitoring and structural evaluation are required in order to ensure a good serviceability and to provide adequate maintenance solutions for the pavements. Non destructive testing (NDT) provides ideal means to test pavement structure in rapid and convenient manner, without traffic disruption and without causing any damages to the existing pavement structure. On this basis, over the past few years, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technology has led to a powerful NDT technique that features several major advantages. GPR has been used successfully in a variety of pavements application such as determining layer thickness, detecting subsurface distresses, estimating moisture content, detecting voids and others. In GPR process an important parameter is the dielectric properties of road materials. This paper investigates the feasibility of GPR use in pavement assessment taking into account the sensitivity of the related results due to the variability of the materials dielectric properties. © RILEM 2013.