Accurate and fast damage thickness estimation in concrete using handheld GPR and spectral pattern matching

Abstract

Handheld Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is utilized for detecting rebar, but detecting damage is difficult due to its low reflectance. This study introduces an algorithm to quantitatively estimate damage thickness from GPR-received waveforms. Simple methods to separate peaks from time waveforms at the top and bottom of the crack prove challenging due to destructive interference and side lobes. In previous studies, it has been confirmed that minor variations in damage thickness affect the frequency property. We propose an algorithm to estimate damage thickness using pattern matching with a theoretical amplitude spectrum that accounts for multiple reflections. Initially, the damage thickness is roughly determined by combining low-frequency spectrum centroids with spectrum amplitude. After roughly estimating the damage thickness, subsequent spectral pattern matching is performed within predefined gating and bandwidth ranges. This approach enables quantitative estimation of damage thickness from 2 mm to 180 mm with a millimeter order accuracy, demonstrating its practical application potential.