Ground Penetrating Radar Application for Positioning Cracks in Non-rigid Road Pavements

An approach to improving subsurface crack detection in road pavement is presented in the paper. The proposed method is based on registering the cross-polarization component of signals reflected from subsurface cracks in the road pavement and uses a ground penetrating radar (GPR) with an antenna unit having one radiating and two receiving antennas. The radiating antenna emits an electromagnetic field with one linear polarization, and two receiving antennas receive ultra-wideband pulse signals at two mutually orthogonal polarizations. To confirm the effectiveness of the method, the used GPR design, and the adequacy of the processing radargram procedures, experimental studies were carried out on highways. Comparison of the results of processing radargrams with cores obtained in the GPR survey areas allows us to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method for solving the problems of positioning subsurface cracks in a non-rigid pavement.