Ground Penetrating Radar Railways Inspection

Ground penetrating radar has been fully applied in civil engineering problems. This paper presents a case study applied to a railway line evaluation. The aim of the job was to study the stability of part of a railway line, using ground penetrating radar images. Radar data was processed in order to optimize the images, and different possible causes of the anomalies are evaluated. Radar data was acquired along the railway line, and noise due to metallic bars was diminished using migration processing. 3D radar imaging was obtained by interpolating the different radar profiles, and anomalies were analyzed in the three axes, defining their possible shape and position. As a result, two possible damaged zones were defined: the first one corresponds to a missing reflector, and could be caused by the merge of two or more layers; the second one was a deformed reflector, possible attributed to a sunken layer or a more wet material.