Reinforced concrete mapping using full-waveform inversion of GPR data

Abstract Mapping the location and dimension of reinforcing bars in concrete can be critical for assessing the structure and state of reinforced concrete. Concrete structures, such as bridge pilings or cell phone tower foundations, are integral to modern life. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is commonly used for mapping rebar grids, but traditional GPR data processing techniques fail to provide reliable information on the diameter of bars. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) of surface-coupled common-offset GPR B-scans (profiles) over reinforced concrete improves estimates of rebar diameters over more conventional ray-based methods. The method applies a sparse blind deconvolution (SBD) technique to obtain the optimized source wavelet and a sparse representation of the subsurface reflectivity series. A ray-based analysis is then performed on the estimated reflectivity model to define the initial geometry model to start the FWI. Applying this method to a synthetic data set and two real data cases with 1 and 2.6 GHz center frequency antennas results in errors in the rebar diameter estimates of less than 11% for rebars with concrete cover of 7.5 cm or less. These results compare favorably with those obtained from other methods that require cross-polarized antennas or ancillary equipment. The synthetic model demonstrates that the combination of SBD and FWI also improves ray-based estimates of the concrete permittivity and conductivity.