Calculation and Interpretation of Ground Penetrating Radar for Temperature and Relative Water Content of Seasonal Permafrost in Qinghai-Tibet Platea

Abstract

Due to the seasonal permafrost thawing, the Qinghai−Tibet Highway has a depression and instability of the roadbed. In order to obtain the ablation interface and water content characteristics of seasonal permafrost areas, non-destructive ground penetrating radars using electromagnetic wave detection methods are widely used. Regarding the imaging of the ablation interface in permafrost regions, this paper proposes a high-precision procedure for seasonal permafrost media using waveform difference analysis, electromagnetic wave attenuation attribute calculation and relative wave impedance conversion. It improves the resolution and division accuracy of the imaging. In addition, the study demonstrates a method to calculate the temperature and water content of the ablation zone by mining attenuation attribute, relative wave impedance attribute, absolute instantaneous amplitude attribute and the weighted average frequency attribute parameters under the constraints of the measured data. This method has high accuracy and high efficiency and can be used in the rapid calculation of temperature and water content of seasonal permafrost on the Qinghai−Tibet Highway.

Keywords

• GPR
• seasonal permafrost
• electromagnetic wave attribute
• relative water content