Ground Penetrating Radar Technique In Monitoring Defects In Roads And Highways

In recent years the trend in the highway industry has been on maintaining and rehabilitating existing<br>structures rather than building new ones. In this area the use of nondestructive testing techniques<br>particularly Ground Penetrating Radar has been growing in importance. Before planning major<br>improvements to any highway it is essential to detect any major defects in the structure. Traditional<br>methods include expensive coring and boring which have limited success at detecting random subsurface<br>defects. GPR offers much potential in providing a cost effective and relatively rapid procedure for<br>nondestructive testing of pavements.<br>The main focus of the paper will be to present a series of case studies in which GPR techniques have<br>been used to tackle a variety of highway related problems. These case studies involve studies undertaken<br>in both Finland and Texas, two completely different environments.