Ballast fouling inspection and quantification with ground penetrating radar (GPR)

Ballast fouling inspection and quantification with ground penetrating radar (GPR)

Guo, Y. (TU Delft Railway Engineering)
Liu, Guixian (China Academy of Railway Sciences)
Jing, Guoqing (Beijing Jiaotong University)
Qu, Jianjun (China Academy of Railway Sciences)
Wang, Shilei (China Academy of Railway Sciences)
Qiang, Weile (China Academy of Railway Sciences)

2022

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been applied for ballast layer inspection for two decades, mainly for the analysis of ballast layer fouling levels. However, some issues that affect the inspection quality remain unsolved, such as issues involving the GPR equipment quality (antenna) and the correlation between the GPR indicator and fouling index. With the aim of solving these two issues, in this paper, we investigated the difference between the results of two different antennas, the GPR data processing technique, indicators for the fouling level (by GPR signal processing) and the correlation between the indicators and fouling index (obtained by sieving). The results show that the antenna quality determines the inspection quality. The indicators can reflect the ballast layer fouling level, and they correlate the best with the fouling index (obtained by the percentage of particles passing through a 5 mm sieve size). This study is helpful for the future modification of railway ballast maintenance standards.

ballast fouling
GPR
Ground penetrating radar
railway ballast
track geometry
track inspection

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:aa47fde7-12cf-4953-9eac-60ae0acbbbd9

https://doi.org/10.1080/23248378.2022.2064346

2324-8378

International Journal of Rail Transportation, 11 (2), 151-168

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2022 Y. Guo, Guixian Liu, Guoqing Jing, Jianjun Qu, Shilei Wang, Weile Qiang