Predicting material properties of concrete from ground-penetrating radar attributes

Abstract

We present here a laboratory-based experimental protocol that seeks to establish and characterize the relationship between ground-penetrating radar attributes and the mechanical properties (density, porosity, and compressive strength) of typical industry concrete mixes. The experimental data consist of ground-penetrating radar attributes from 900 MHz radargrams that correspond to simultaneously measured physical properties of Portland cement concrete, alkali-activated concrete, and cement mortar. Appropriate regression models are trained and tested on this data set to predict each physical property from ground-penetrating radar attributes. From a small selection of individual attributes, including total phase and intensity, trained random forest regression models predict porosity (R² = 0.83 from the instantaneous amplitude), density (R² = 0.67 from the intensity attribute), and compressive strength (R² = 0.51 from instantaneous amplitude). These novel relationships between physical properties and ground-penetrating radar attributes indicate that material properties could be predicted from the attributes of ordinary ground-penetrating radar scans of concrete.