Comparison of ultrasonic and GPR methods for investigation of reinforced concrete columns

Abstract

The presence of internal concreting defects such as pores, cavities, sinks, in load-bearing vertical structures can lead to serious consequences, up to accidents. In this regard, it is especially important to identify such defects is an important and relevant task during surveys of load-bearing structures of buildings and structures. At the same time, the search for internal defects is complicated by the fact that they may not be visible on the surface, but may be present in the body of structures. In order to control the quality of the erected monolithic structures, their instrumental examination is carried out with the identification of the possible presence of internal defects by the method of through ultrasonic sounding. The article discusses the comparison of ultrasonic and GPR methods for searching for internal defects in concreting reinforced concrete columns. The studies were carried out on real construction sites in which there were suspicions of internal defects in concreting of high columns. Conclusions are drawn about the possibilities and limitations of the methods. The resolution limits of the methods are presented. The results of the conducted studies show that, despite the relative modern popularity of ground-penetrating radar, ultrasonic methods can work equally well in this type of specific research scenario and have shown a high potential to overcome some inherent limitations of ground-penetrating radar when working with saturated reinforcement.