Experimental study of soil compaction effects on GPR signals

Mechanical operations may lead to soil compaction hazard in land consolidation projects. Aiming to quantitatively guarantee soil compaction status with ground penetrating radar (GPR), we should clearly understand the relationship between bulk density/penetration resistance (PR) and GPR signals. This research adopted GPR with a central frequency of 500MHz and the experimental design with laboratory test and outdoor test. Because soil dielectric constant receives combination influence of soil properties, statistical methods were used to analyze the influence of soil bulk density on electromagnetic wave velocity. Significant correlation exists between electromagnetic wave velocity and bulk density, with a partial correlation coefficient of 0.882 and two-tailed significance of 0.020. While soil dielectric constant strongly depends on soil water content, the growing of soil bulk density usually reduces free water content, increases bound water content and finally influences GPR signals. The results also showed that high soil PR value accompanied with low amplitude values of electromagnetic wave and fast decay rate of the amplitude back to noise level. More experimental data would be acquired for accurate quantification between soil compaction and GPR signals with statistic methods in the future research. •We planned a 4-layer laboratory model to observe the relevant changes of GPR signal.•We used statistic correlation analysis to pursue soil compaction effect on GPR signal.•High PR value can decrease the amplitude and accelerate the attenuation of EM wave.