Our participation in the COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) programme gave us significant insights into the importance of explaining scientific findings to non-scientific audiences. In the framework of COST Action TU1208 "Civil engineering applications of Ground Penetrating Radar" we organised a series of dissemination activities to increase public awareness about ground penetrating radar (GPR) capabilities and applications, as well as to establish a dialogue with stakeholders and end-users of our research. Most of our educational and promotional activities were carried out in less-research intensive countries of the European continent, and we denominated the overall science communication initiative "TU1208 GPR Roadshow". The purpose of this paper is to present descriptions, principles, and results of our Roadshow.
Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) has been used recently for diagnostics of the railway infrastructure, particularly the ballast layer. To overcome ballast fouling, mechanized ballast cleaning process, which increases track occupancy time and cost, is usually used. Hence it is of crucial significance to identify at which stage of track ballast life cycle, and level of fouling, ballast cleaning should be initiated. In the present study, a series of in situ GPR surveys on selected railway track sections in Czechia was performed to obtain railway granite ballast relative dielectric permittivity (RDP) values in several phases of railway track lifecycle. GPR data were collected in the form of B-scan, and time-domain analysis was used for post-processing. The results indicate (i) change of railway ballast RDP in time (long term); (ii) a dependency of ballast fouling level on RDP; and (iii) the RDP change during the ballast cleaning process, thus its efficiency. This research aimed to provide new perspectives into the decision-making process in initiating the mechanized ballast cleaning intervention based on the GPR-measured data.
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