Correlation of ground penetrating radar and nuclear density gauge data to determine the density of asphalt pavement

This paper demonstrates the field performance of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) as a non-destructive testing tool to predict in situ asphalt pavement. In previous study, GPR has been used successfully in a variety of pavements application such as determining layer thickness, detecting subsurface distresses, and others. Nuclear Density Gauge (NDG) is specifically designed to measure the moisture and density of soils, aggregates, cement, and lime treated materials, and also to measure the density of asphalt concrete. Alternative analysis approaches by correlating the GPR and NDG data had been performed for density prediction of asphalt pavement. A density model name Al-Qadi, Lahouar, and Leng (ALL model) was used to predict the density of the asphalt pavement from the GPR data correlate with NDG database. This study shows that density for asphalt pavement from GPR data provide reasonably accurate density prediction when ALL model approach was used.