Ground Penetrating Radar survey for civil-engineering applications: results from the test site

GPR survey was used as a non-invasive geophysical technique for civil-engineering. This survey was performed in the test site of XIII International Conference “GPR 2010”, Lecce (Italy). In order to simulate subsurface archaeological and engineering targets several objects, of different materials and geometries, was buried in the subsurface. A small building was built in the area using different construction techniques for different walls, both ancient and modern. GPR method can detect such superficial bodies or different walls with a relative efficiency depending on the field context, the dielectric properties of the host material and the nature and size of the bodies. In this work we have carried out two test. The first to verify the 900 MHz antenna resolution to estimate layers thickness of the sack walls typical of the Salento (Lecce, Italy). The second test to assess the 400 MHz antenna resolution to detect target of engineering interest in the first few meters. Very useful is also the use of three-dimensional data volumes and time slices for interpretation.