In railways Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) studies, the evaluation of materials dielectric properties is critical as they are sensitive to water content, to petrographic type of aggregates and to fouling condition of the ballast. Under the load traffic, maintenance actions and climatic effects, ballast condition change due to aggregate breakdown and to subgrade soils pumping, mainly on existing lines with no sub ballast layer. The main purpose of this study was to validate, under controlled conditions, the dielectric values of materials used in Portuguese railways, in order to improve the GPR interpretation using commercial software and consequently the management maintenance planning. Different materials were tested and a broad range of in situ conditions were simulated in laboratory, in physical models. GPR tests were performed with five antennas with frequencies between 400 and 1800 MHz. The variation of the dielectric properties was measured, and the range of values that can be obtained for different material condition was defined. Additionally, in situ GPR measurements and test pits were performed for validation of the dielectric constant of clean ballast. The results obtained are analyzed and the main conclusions are presented herein.

A proper quality control of the railway track condition and its monitoring since the construction phase are key factors for a long life cycle and for an efficient maintenance policy. For this purpose, suitable techniques, such as non-destructive tests, represent an efficient monitoring solution as they allow evaluating infrastructure characteristics continuously, saving time and costs, with minimal interferences on track use. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a fast and effective electromagnetic survey technique that enables the measuring of layers thickness, detection of changes on structure or on materials properties along the line. It can also detect different types of defects such as ballast pockets, fouled ballast, poor drainage, subgrade settlement and transitions problems, depending on their extension. These defects are generally the causes of vertical deviations in track geometry and they cannot be detected by the common monitoring procedures, namely the measurements of track geometry. GPR application to railways infrastructures at network level is relatively recent. In Portugal, rail inspection is performed with Plasser & Theurer EM120 equipment and recently 400 MHz IDS antennas were installed on it. GPR tests were performed on the Portuguese rail network and, as case study, a section of an in service tracks is addressed in this paper. A combined monitoring approach is presented, based on interpretation of the geometric parameter measurement, currently utilized for maintenance planning, together with GPR results, in order to detect the causes of the track deterioration and to plan more appropriate maintenance interventions.