Yixing, Jiangsu uses "B-ultrasound machine" for road physical examinations: the "magic weapon" is called ground penetrating radar!

Recently, a "magic tool" was used in the repair of the revetment in Caihangli, Yixing. This "magic tool" looks inconspicuous, but it has superb capabilities. By dragging it along the road, it can be found which areas have subsidence, cavities and other roadbed diseases, and the maintenance plan implemented later is targeted, accurate and efficient.

This "magic weapon" is called ground penetrating radar, which is a "B-ultrasound machine" specially designed for road physical examinations. In recent years, the renovation of the old city has beautified the back streets and alleys, and the streets and alleys have improved in appearance, but the "diseases" under the road surface in the old city are difficult to detect with the naked eye. With the increase in urban road collapse accidents, road collapse prevention and control have become the focus of municipal road maintenance. For this reason, Yixing cooperated with a third party to introduce ground penetrating radar technology to diagnose the "inside" of the road.

The ground penetrating radar is a small yellow box with an electronic screen connected to the other end. The equipment is composed of electromagnetic wave remote sensing, photogrammetry, multi-channel ground penetrating radar, high-precision positioning equipment, geographic information system, etc. During the detection process, the equipment can set reasonable acquisition parameters according to factors such as antenna frequency and detection depth, realize full coverage detection from shallow to deep, accurately identify poor geological bodies such as cavities and looseness within 3 meters below the road surface, and timely locate defects and cracks in each layer of the road surface.

The equipment will issue a "physical examination form" for the road sections that have been "checked", and the road sections with hidden dangers will appear blank on the map. By collecting data for analysis, relevant departments can accurately identify the causes of road diseases, understand the distribution of underground disease bodies, and assess the impact of diseases on vehicle traffic safety, so as to formulate effective disposal plans and prevent problems before they occur.

It is understood that the ground penetrating radar has already carried out detection in areas such as Yixing Jiaoyu Road and Chaoyang New Village, and will also carry out detection on some sections of Yangquan East Road in the future. In the future, ground penetrating radar technology will gradually develop into a normalized means of municipal road management and disease prevention in Yixing to ensure urban road safety.

Without "cutting open the belly", you can know the underground situation. The advanced "pathfinding" method has also aroused the curiosity of surrounding residents. At the work site, the technicians also served as voluntary science popularizers, emphasizing that ground penetrating radar is a non-destructive detection method with the advantages of fast, continuous and high resolution. The technicians said that ground penetrating radar emits high-frequency electromagnetic waves, which will be reflected when encountering the interface between different media when propagating in the underground medium. "According to this principle, because the soil layer under the road and the air in the cavity are different media, the radar will reflect at the interface between the soil and the gas." This convenient, efficient and high-precision ground penetrating radar that reflects shallow geological structure information has been widely used in municipal pipeline surveys, highway and airport road surface inspections, railways, tunnels, bridge surveys and other fields in some parts of the country.
 

A relevant person in charge of the Municipal Affairs Department of Yixing Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau said that the department has carried out local pilot inspections near the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau on Jiaoyu Road and the Caihangli revetment, and will determine the maintenance plan based on the inspection report submitted by Sujiaoke Group to prepare for a rainy day and eliminate road hazards. In the next stage, the department will also gradually promote this technology on urban municipal roads based on summarizing experience.