Nondestructive Inspection of an Airport Pavement by MIMO Array GPR YAKUMO

In this paper, an efficient and objective method to detect the occurrence of layer de-bonding in asphalt pavement layer has developed. This method evaluates the lateral wave amplitude of CMP gathers by a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) GPR system YAKUMO. The system operates in the frequency range from 50 MHz to 1.5 GHz. It consists of 8 transmitting antenna array and 8 receiving antenna array. Each antenna has 24 cm separation spacing, both transmitting and receiving antenna array. Considering the antenna configuration and designing survey lines spacing, amount of CMP gathers could extract out in a large survey area. After the amplitude correction, the lateral wave amplitude of each CMP gather was analyzed. In particular, this method allows us to distinguish the multiple echoes contribution which was generated by the stripping phenomenon occurred between asphalt layers. The real application demonstrated this method at Tokyo International airport taxiway. The method shows a high consistency of the traditional sounding method. It provides an innovative way for the stripping detection of the partially damaged pavement while were hard to be observed by the reflected signals.