Détection des cavités à l'aide de mesures électriques et du géoradar dans une galerie d'amenée d'eau

Abstract Old water-delivery tunnels can become leaky and produce water losses of some economic importance. The detection of solution cavities behind the concrete lining was the purpose of an investigation in a 2 km long part of a water-delivery tunnel in Switzerland. A gypsum zone of about 700 m length was considered to be especially critical. Two geophysical methods were used at the same time: resistivity profiling with three different array lengths, and ground-penetrating radar. The cavities were characterized by higher electrical resistivity, principally for the short array ( AB = 3 m). Detailed measurements with a pole-dipole array were made for a better depth interpretation of anomalies in some critical zones. The GPR investigations were made with an antenna of 500 MHz. Some transverse profiles were carried out with GPR in order to better delineate the discovered cavernous or weathered zones. GPR located cavities up to a few meters in length, at depths between 0 and 4 m behind the lining. Anomalies found by one investigation method were often confirmed by the other one. Their complementarity thus allowed a more reliable interpretation of the gathered data. Verifying drillholes have mostly confirmed the good correlation between geophysical interpretation and drilling results. Endoscopic investigations in the drillholes enabled us to have a real vision of discovered cavities. Although GPR-profiling has the advantage of a continuous underground imaging and of greater efficiency during data acquisition (investigation speed) we consider the combination of both methods in the present study as a good example of an integrated geophysical survey, which enables a more reliable interpretation of the gathered data.