Sandberg are pleased to announce that an article titled: “Finite difference time domain modelling as support to ground penetrating radar surveys of precast concrete units”, written by Davide Campo (Manager of our GPR Department) for the Near Surface Geophysics Journal has been published and is now available from the Wiley Online Library.
The article will be included in a special issue of Near Surface Geophysics in June “GPR for Civil and Environmental Engineering”.
Finite difference time domain modelling as support to ground penetrating radar surveys of precast concrete units
The following is the Abstract for the article:
Precast concrete elements are commonly employed in the construction industry, however, failing to comply with manufacturers’ guidelines and poor construction practice can lead to loss of efficiency compromising the usability of the building.
This paper presents two case studies where Ground Penetrating Radar surveys, performed to investigate the cause of failure of precast concrete elements, were supported by the finite difference time domain numerical approach.
In the first case, the model was built after the survey for a better understanding of the complex reflection patterns unexpectedly experienced and to provide a clear interpretation.
In the second case, the numerical simulation was performed prior to the survey, based on the information already available about the precast unit. The synthetic radargrams were then used as a valuable reference to assess the precast element internal conditions. On-site, the comparison of the real radargrams with the synthetic ones, allowed intrusive works to be planned in order to determine the concrete quality. During the off-site data processing stage, any deviation from the synthetic radar response gave an indication of potential anomalies in the installation operations.
The finite difference time domain method should be considered as a useful complementary application to Ground Penetrating Radar surveys, aimed to investigate precast elements.
The full article is available from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nsg.12037 as a paid download.
