Application of radar technology to reinforced concrete structures: a case study

The radar technology, used to perform investigations on the civil buildings, derives from that used for investigations of the ground known with the name of Georadar. This is diffusing rapidly among the investigation methodology not destructive in the field of the structural engineering. It is based on the sending of electromagnetic waves of very short length and the recording of the time of arrival and of the breadth of any signals reflected on the interface between materials with a different dielectric constant. The aim of this paper is to present the operating methodologies and the results achieved by the application in the field of radar methodologies to map utilities, and for applications to civil building with special regard to the determination of the intern morphology, to the lack of homogeneity research and defectiveness and to the determination of the location of the steel reinforcements. Specifically, the system used, made up of one apparatus of field acquisition and another of delayed processing, seems to be able to provide good planimetric and three-dimensional restitution with regard to location and placement. In this paper, special attention has been paid to the processing of the acquired data and on the interpretation of experimental tests conducted on a civil building. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.