Non Destructive Tests for Evaluation of Railway Platforms: Application of Ground Penetrating Radar

Identification and diagnosis of railway track problems of the supporting layers is essential to achieve efficient maintenance and safe train operations [1]. Nowadays, maintenance interventions consist of performing different operations such as levelling and tamping of the track, based on the measured geometric parameters. Although these actions restore the track design geometry, they do not solve substructure related problems. Thus, a better maintenance policy should be adopted so that structural problems can be identified and solved earlier, for example by using non-destructive tests [1,2] during monitoring surveys. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a non-destructive technique that allows the evaluation of the infrastructure condition almost continuously, enabling, besides the measurement of thickness of layers, the identification of changes in the structure and material condition along the track [2].