Quantification of railroad ballast condition using ground penetrating radar data

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Quantification of railroad ballast condition using ground penetrating radar data

Xie, W. / Al-Qadi, I.L. / Roberts, R. / Tutumluer, E. / Boyle, J.

Ground penetrating radar, as a rapid and effective nondestructive evaluation technique, has been used to evaluate the condition of railroad track substructure. Reflected imaging may provide a relatively good indication of substructure layer configuration. However, in order to reduce the strong clutter bands from rails and obtain a clear image, the data needs to be processed appropriately. Further analysis of GPR data can be used to determine more quantifiable characteristics of substructure conditions such as fouling condition of ballast and water content of ballast. In this study, GPR has been used successfully to distinguish between fouled and clean ballast, measure ballast thickness, and detect trapped water in ballast. The increase of fouling in ballast affects the scattering pattern in the GPR data. This pattern can be used to generate a ballast fouling index. A 2GHz horn antenna has been used successfully to effectively detect the change in scattering pattern caused by the change in air volume in the ballast due to fouling.