TY - JOUR A1 - Lai Wai-Lok, Wallace A1 - Kind, Thomas A1 - Wiggenhauser, Herbert T1 - Using ground penetrating radar and time-frequency analysis to characterize construction materials JF - NDT & E international N2 - For decades, applications of nondestructive evaluation-civil engineering (NDE-CE) focus on object identifications (such as steel bars, tendon ducts and backwall reflections) in infrastructures. Because of the advantage of efficient visualization of internal structure, utilization of these methods can probably be extended to material characterization (MC) of aging and adversely exposed infrastructures. However, two factors yield a big gap between NDE and MC. First, for the ease of visualization, the primary focus of NDE-signal processing is object identification, which usually alters the originality of the signal. Second, there is lack of relationship and inverse models bridging the NDE-derived and conventional material properties compared to other disciplines of science, such as geophysics. These disadvantages make laboratory and field-scale NDE-MC still a far-reaching holy grail and is possibly the greatest hurdle to be regularly adopted in CE structures. This paper attempts to address this gap from object identification to MC using ground penetrating radar (GPR) as one of the most frequently used NDE-CE methods, and signal processing with joint time–frequency domain (JTFA) analysis. Three examples of material property characterization regarding the individual effects of steel bar corrosion in concrete, hydration and moisture content distribution of construction materials are given. KW - Ground penetrating radar KW - Time-frequency analysis KW - Construction materials KW - Short time fourier transform PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ndteint.2010.10.002 SN - 0963-8695 VL - 44 IS - 1 SP - 111 EP - 120 PB - Butterworth-Heinemann CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-26288 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lai Wai-Lok, Wallace A1 - Kind, Thomas A1 - Wiggenhauser, Herbert T1 - Frequency-dependent dispersion of high-frequency ground penetrating radar wave in concrete JF - NDT & E international N2 - This paper studies the dielectric dispersion of high frequency radar wave in concrete in early-aged and hardened concrete specimens. Frequency-dependent spectra of phase velocity ν(ω) were measured to deduce the spectra of real part of dielectric permittivity ε'(ω). The dispersion was measured by three high nominal ground penetrating radar frequencies (1.5, 1.6 and 2.6 GHz), experimenting on two steel bars with concrete cover 50 and 100 mm. It was found that ν(ω) and ε'(ω) dispersed at lower frequency, but became stable at high frequency regions, which agrees with the classical GPR plateau. The same frequency components at different nominal antenna frequencies show a close range of ν(ω) and ε'(ω) in concrete of different ages. The results in this paper warrant further investigation of using GPR wave to study material properties. KW - Frequency-dependent dielectric dispersion KW - Ground penetrating radar (GPR) KW - Phase velocity KW - Real part of dielectric permittivity KW - Concrete PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ndteint.2010.12.004 SN - 0963-8695 VL - 44 IS - 3 SP - 267 EP - 273 PB - Butterworth-Heinemann CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-26289 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lai Wai-Lok, Wallace A1 - Kind, Thomas A1 - Stoppel, Markus A1 - Wiggenhauser, Herbert T1 - Measurement of accelerated steel corrosion in concrete using ground-penetrating radar and a modified half-cell potential method JF - Journal of infrastructure systems N2 - A new approach is presented to evaluate corrosion of steel bars in concrete by 1.5- and 2.6-GHz ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and a modified half-cell potential method. Changes in time-lapsed travel times, amplitudes, and peak frequencies that are associated with short-time Fourier transform spectrograms of the bar reflections were continuously measured. The year-long corrosion process of the reinforcement bar rapidly accelerated within a few days by impressing direct current across a pair of embedded reinforcement bars, which served as the anode and cathode. When corrosion started, the travel times, amplitudes, and frequency spectra of the bar reflection changed. The results were analyzed by dividing the material's response into three phases (NaCl contamination, depassivation, and corrosion). The writers attribute the phenomena of the first two phases to the ionic conduction and interfacial polarization effect, described in the low-frequency regime of complex dielectric permittivity outlined in the Maxwell-Wagner effect. The remaining phase corresponds with the appearance of large and multiple interfaces among steel, concrete, corrosion product, and cracks, in addition to the upward movement of the corrosion product to the concrete surface that intercepts wider radar footprints. The findings, based on time lapse measurements, provide a basis to further apply the GPR technique to spatial measurements in laboratory and field studies. KW - Accelerated steel corrosion in concrete KW - Ground-penetrating radar KW - Short-time Fourier transform KW - Half-cell potential PY - 2013 DO - https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000083 SN - 1076-0342 SN - 1943-555X IS - June SP - 205 EP - 220 CY - New York, NY AN - OPUS4-28851 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lai Wai-Lok, Wallace A1 - Kind, Thomas A1 - Kruschwitz, Sabine A1 - Wöstmann, Jens A1 - Wiggenhauser, Herbert T1 - Spectral absorption of spatial and temporal ground penetrating radar signals by water in construction materials JF - NDT & E international N2 - This paper studies the spatial and temporal spectral absorption of reflector signals of a 1.5 GHz ground penetrating radar (GPR) during a drying process of a brickwall from initial wet to later dry state. The non-stationary GPR signals were processed with short time-Fourier transform (STFT) and wavelet transform (WT) in a novel spatial-time–frequency (STF) domain. Spatial distribution of peak frequency at the direct wave (DW) across the antenna and a backwall reflection was studied to characterize the mechanism of spectral absorption of GPR wave. Results from WT were shown to be more preferred to those from STFT because the WT offers multiple resolutions to cope with both low and high frequency components in GPR wavelets but STFT does not. In addition to the traditional GPR signal interpretation in time-domain and our previous works on time–frequency domain, the analysis method operated in the STF domain provides another possibility of material characterization by GPR in large and field scale. KW - Ground penetrating radar (GPR) KW - Short time-Fourier transform (STFT) KW - Wavelet transform (WT) KW - Spatial and temporal spectral absorption KW - Construction materials KW - Dual-polarization PY - 2014 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ndteint.2014.06.009 SN - 0963-8695 VL - 67 SP - 55 EP - 63 PB - Butterworth-Heinemann CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-31838 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lai Wai-Lok, Wallace A1 - Kind, Thomas A1 - Wiggenhauser, Herbert T1 - A study of concrete hydration and dielectric relaxation mechanism using ground penetrating radar and short-time fourier transform JF - EURASIP journal on advances in signal processing N2 - Ground penetrating radar (GPR) was used to characterize the frequency-dependent dielectric relaxation phenomena in ordinary Portland cement (OPC) hydration in concrete changing from fresh to hardened state. The study was experimented by measuring the changes of GPR A-scan waveforms over a period of 90 days, and processed the waveforms with short-time Fourier transform (STFT) in joint time-frequency analysis (JTFA) domain rather than a conventional time or frequency domain alone. The signals of the direct wave traveled at the concrete surface and the reflected wave from an embedded steel bar were transformed with STFT, in which the changes of peak frequency over ages were tracked. The peak frequencies were found to increase with ages and the patterns were found to match closely with primarily the well-known OPC hydration process and secondarily, the evaporation effect. The close match is contributed to the simultaneous effects converting free to bound water over time, on both conventional OPC hydration and dielectric relaxation mechanisms. KW - Soil water content KW - Wet soil KW - Microwave KW - Moisture KW - GPR KW - Dispersion PY - 2010 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-239723 DO - https://doi.org/10.1155/2010/317216 SN - 1687-6172 IS - Article ID 317216 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Hindawi Publ. CY - New York, NY, USA AN - OPUS4-23972 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -