New Progress of GPR to Detect Underground Pipelines

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is an important means to detect underground pipelines. For a long time, there are so many baffling problems for GPR, such as: to distinguish multiple pipes which are close together, to detect the material and diameter size of the pipe, the detection of small diameter non-metallic pipelines, etc. Since an RIS-based ground penetrating radar from Italy has been applied to detect pipelines, great progress has been made in the solutions to these problems. Generally speaking, many close distance pipelines can't be distinguished. Even the closed metal pipes can't be distinguished by the pipeline detectors, but can be easily distinguished by GPR now. Through analyzing radar images, the materials of the detected pipes and the materials inside the pipes can be distinguished and the diameters of non-metallic water supply pipes can be calculated using the spacing of the intervals of radar reflected waves. Good progress was also made in the detection of small non-metallic pipes (with diameter less than 300mm).