GSSI
As the world struggles to improve its critical infrastructure, attention is being paid to non-destructive testing (NDT) methods that can help to accurately determine what can be repaired and what needs to be replaced.
Many see the benefits of NDT methods as a way to cut down on the actual work that has to be done, while making sure that condition data is most accurate. Among the available NDT methods, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is growing in importance, especially for use in geotechnical, environmental, and dam evaluation applications. Increasingly, the public and privately funded dam owners are looking to GPR technology to inspect the dam infrastructure and surrounding areas.
GPR uses radar (radio detection and ranging) to transmit and receive high frequency electromagnetic waves to image the subsurface. A tiny pulse of radio-frequency energy is sent into a material using an antenna. This wave reaches a target and is reflected back to the receiver antenna as a high frequency, electromagnetic reflection. The whole process happens very quickly – at about 100,000 pulses per second. GPR features extremely low power emission rates – less than 1 percent of the radio waves used by a cell phone – so there is no need for extra safety equipment or safety training to use these antennas …more