GPR determination of physical parameters of railway structural layers

• Determining seasonal changes of electrical characteristics of soil using GPR data.
• Evaluation of soil conductivity using the attenuation of scattered signal.
• Quantitative processing of the GPR data for determining the refractive index.

The paper studies the possibility of quantitative processing of the GPR data for determining the refractive index and conductivity of motor road and railway constructional layers. The main objective of the work is to develop a method of obtaining quantitative information on chosen physical properties of soil layers from regular GPR surveys. Theoretical study of plane electromagnetic wave propagation is made for the model of layered soil structure. As a result of the study appropriate equation systems are derived for the calculations of refractive index and conductivity of structural layers. Based on these equations the method of quantitative processing of radargrams is proposed. The method includes the GPR data processing algorithm and theoretical techniques for determination of refractive index and conductivity of the structural layers. The applicability of the proposed method was initially validated by lab experiments using radargrams of the soil samples with specified values of moisture and conductivity and reliable results were achieved. The methods were also successfully used while monitoring the long term seasonal changes in structural layers of several Russian railways sections. The contamination of ballast material is also evaluated by this method in addition to the refractive index and conductivity.