A comparative investigation of the effects of concrete sleepers on the GPR signal for the assessment of railway ballast

The non-destructive testing and diagnosis of transport infrastructures is essential because of the need to protect these facilities for mobility, and for economic and social development. The effective and timely assessment of structural health conditions becomes crucial in order to assure the safety of the transportation system and time saver protocols, as well as to reduce excessive repair and maintenance costs. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is one of the most recommended non-destructive methods for routine subsurface inspections. This paper focuses on the on-site use of GPR applied to transport infrastructures, namely pavements, railways, retaining walls, bridges and tunnels. The methodologies, advantages and disadvantages, along with up-to-date research results on GPR in infrastructure inspection are presented herein. Hence, through the review of the published literature, the potential of using GPR is demonstrated, while the main limitations of the method are discussed and some practical recommendations are made.

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“…• The influence of concrete sleepers on the assessment of ballast condition (laboratory tests) [111].…”

Section: Ballasted Railways (Superstructure and Substructure)mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of GPR Application on Transport Infrastructures: Troubleshooting and Best Practices

2021

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“…Future research could task itself with additional geostatistical analyses for the structural monitoring of airport runways using integrated non-destructive ground-based technology for surface (e.g., laser scanner [ 9 ]) and subsurface (e.g., Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 76 ]) characterisation of displacements in runways and the improvement of their safety operating conditions.…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing Sentinel-1 SAR Interferometry Data for Airport Runway Monitoring: A Geostatistical Analysis

Gagliardi

Ciampoli

Trevisani

et al. 2021

Sensors

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Multi-Temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (MT-InSAR) techniques are gaining momentum in the assessment and health monitoring of infrastructure assets. Amongst others, the Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) technique has proven to be viable for the long-term evaluation of ground scatterers. However, its effectiveness as a routine tool for certain critical application areas, such as the assessment of millimetre-scale differential displacements in airport runways, is still debated. This research aims to demonstrate the viability of using medium-resolution Copernicus ESA Sentinel-1A (C-Band) SAR products and their contribution to improve current maintenance strategies in case of localised foundation settlements in airport runways. To this purpose, “Runway n.3” of the “Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport” in Fiumicino, Rome, Italy was investigated as an explanatory case study, in view of historical geotechnical settlements affecting the runway area. In this context, a geostatistical study is developed for the exploratory spatial data analysis and the interpolation of the Sentinel-1A SAR data. The geostatistical analysis provided ample information on the spatial continuity of the Sentinel 1 data in comparison with the high-resolution COSMO-SkyMed data and the ground-based topographic levelling data. Furthermore, a comparison between the PSI outcomes from the Sentinel-1A SAR data—interpolated through Ordinary Kriging—and the ground-truth topographic levelling data demonstrated the high accuracy of the Sentinel 1 data. This is proven by the high values of the correlation coefficient (r = 0.94), the multiple R-squared coefficient (R2 = 0.88) and the Slope value (0.96). The results of this study clearly support the effectiveness of using Sentinel-1A SAR data as a continuous and long-term routine monitoring tool for millimetre-scale displacements in airport runways, paving the way for the development of more efficient and sustainable maintenance strategies for inclusion in next generation Airport Pavement Management Systems (APMSs).

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“…Currently, several on-site non-destructive testing (NDT) technologies and sensors are available for subsidence monitoring and displacement mapping. Amongst the others, accelerometers [2], strain gauges [3], Global Position System (GPS), levelling [4][5], Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Infrared Thermography (IRT) [6][7][8] and terrestrial SAR Interferometry [9], are recognised as viable technologies for infrastructure monitoring. However, on-site surveys are costly and are difficult to implement at the network level due to economic and administrative budget constraints.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Perspectives in the Monitoring of Transport Infrastructures by Sentinel-1 and Cosmo-Skymed Multi-Temporal SAR Interferometry

Gagliardi

Ciampoli

D’Amico

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS

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In recent years, successful applications of the Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) for the monitoring of subsidence and deformations in transport infrastructures have been reported in the literature. The main advantage of this technique compared to other non-destructive surveying methodologies is in the possibility to perform fast networklevel surveys as well as the provision of time-series of the displacements by multi-temporal data acquisitions. Given the medium ground resolution, C-band imagery are usually not employed for transport infrastructure monitoring as it is considered unlikely to obtain sufficiently accurate information. However, the use of medium resolution SAR data has not been thoroughly investigated until now and is still an open challenge. This study presents a novel approach for transport assets monitoring, based on the synergistic use of medium resolution (C-Band) and high resolution (X-Band) SAR imagery. To this effect, a multitemporal SAR Interferometry analysis of high and mediumresolution datasets is performed on a runway of the Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in Rome, Italy. The data were acquired by the Sentinel-1A and the COSMO-SkyMed missions, respectively. A comparison between the results from medium and high-resolution datasets demonstrates the viability of using multi-frequency SAR imagery, and pave the way to the development of new methodologies for the monitoring of transport infrastructures.

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A comparative investigation of the effects of concrete sleepers on the GPR signal for the assessment of railway ballast

Cited by 24 publications

References 22 publications

A Review of GPR Application on Transport Infrastructures: Troubleshooting and Best Practices

A Review of GPR Application on Transport Infrastructures: Troubleshooting and Best Practices

Testing Sentinel-1 SAR Interferometry Data for Airport Runway Monitoring: A Geostatistical Analysis

Novel Perspectives in the Monitoring of Transport Infrastructures by Sentinel-1 and Cosmo-Skymed Multi-Temporal SAR Interferometry

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