Use of Ground Penetrating Radar Technology To Assess and Monitor Pavement Structural Conditions for Improved Pavement Maintenance and Rehabilitation Strategies

Details

• Creators:
  Kim, S Sonny ; Durham, Stephan A. ; Yang, J James ; Abdelmawla, Ahmad ; Romeo, Ryan
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Georgia. College of Engineering
• Corporate Contributors:
  Georgia. Department of Transportation. Office of Performance-Based Management & Research ; United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Data Analysis Geological Surveying Ground Penetrating Radar Nondestructive Tests Pavement Layers Pavement Maintenance Resilience (Materials) Soil Densification
• Publication/ Report Number:
  FHWA-GA-21-1921
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Georgia;United States
• Edition:
  Final Report (Nov. 2019–Sept. 2021)
• Corporate Publisher:
  Georgia. Department of Transportation. Office of Performance-Based Management & Research
• Abstract:
  Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology has been widely applied in ground subsurface investigations. The major development of GPR for pavement assessment originated in the early 1980s and since has become a well- established investigation technique for pavements. Analysis of GPR data provides much richer information on layer depths of pavement structure, material conditions, moisture content, voids, and locations of reinforcement and other features. Being able to accurately and reliably assess the underlying conditions of pavements is essential to fully understand both functional and structural deficiencies or failures of pavements and associated causality. This improved understanding will lead to the most cost-effective maintenance and rehabilitation treatments and considerable savings in maintenance and rehabilitation expenditure. The overall goal of this research is to extend the GPR technology in combination with modern data analytics to provide improved pavement investigation capabilities. As a result, new methodologies and analytical procedures were developed to acquire and analyze field GPR data, and infer subgrade density and water content, which are critical for the diagnosis of pavement failure and underlying causality. Based on the outcomes of the research, the potential pavement foundation issues of critical state highways in Georgia are reported. This study also compares GPR and falling weight deflectometer (FWD) data. Analysis of the preliminary results from I-75N suggest GPR is capable of identifying general trends in the variation of subgrade density and modulus. However, a further investigation into the relationship between GPR-derived subgrade density and FWD- back calculated subgrade modulus is recommended. The expected benefit of determining an accurate relationship between the two methodologies is that GPR can be used as an initial investigation, which can quickly identify locations of atypical/abnormal/unexpected pavement characteristics. Then, FWD testing can be conducted at those locations and serve as a deeper investigation, which takes more time to conduct/process but has higher accuracy.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  PI# 0016970
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0b89b27bba1e2b3f9d0ba79560cfa31ba19c21149c567bad5e779358b895236977cfc5fd58a9828a6edea245169c26d0cf309e51766f847986fe1d5de177f21a
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/64373/dot_64373_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.09 MB ]