Monitoring the Evolution of Water and Chloride in

Alexis Kalogeropoulos
EMPA
Dbendorf, Switzerland
Email: alexis.kalogeropoulos@empa.ch
Jan van der Kruk
Forschungszentrum Jlich
Jlich, Germany
Email: j.van.der.kruk@fz-juelich.de
Johannes Hugenschmidt
EMPA
Dbendorf, Switzerland
Email: Johannes.Hugenschmidt@empa.ch
AbstractThe assessment of ageing concrete structures is a
major technical challenge faced by the Civil Engineers of today.
Concrete bridges are exposed to corrosion from the spreading of
de-icing salts on roads during winter. Corrosion is problematic
because it reduces the reinforcements load carrying capacity and
a long-term consequence can be structural failure. This paper
describes an experiment that consisted in exposing a concrete
specimen to a controlled wetting-drying cycle using a saline
solution. This setup enabled the concentration of chlorides to be
distributed in gradients inside the specimen. A novel methodology
to estimate material properties, based on ground penetrating
radar (GPR) full-waveform inversion, was used to process GPR
traces. In this paper, each reection present in the trace was
regarded independently. This procedure was applied to a dataset
acquired with bistatic off-ground GPR antennas. Measurements
were carried out above the test specimen at regular time lapses.
This allowed monitoring of the electromagnetic parameters of the
top and bottom concrete specimen surfaces during the wetting-
drying cycle.
Index TermsNon-destructive testing, GPR, monitoring, chlo-
ride and water content in concrete, full-waveform inversion
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the assessment of existing concrete structures is
a major challenge for civil engineers and an important issue is
reinforcement corrosion. Structures like bridges are exposed
to corrosion because of salt spread in winter for road de-
icing. GPR enables a continuous non-destructive investigation
of reinforced concrete structures like bridge decks [1], [2].
A. The corrosion process
During winter, when salt is used for road de-icing, the
chlorides dissolved in the melt water penetrate inside the pores
of the concrete. During dry seasons water evaporates without
mobilizing chlorides that remain in the concrete. In this
way the alternation of weathering cycles causes the chlorides
to gradually migrate through the pores of the concrete by
capillarity and diffusion processes [3]. Thus one can expect to
encounter chloride and water concentration to be distributed
in gradients within a concrete structure. Reinforced concrete
structures and specically bridge decks contain several layers
of steel reinforcing bars (rebars) for bearing resistance. Once
chlorides reach the rst rebar layer (generally located at 24
cm depth) the chloride ions remove the protecting passivation
layer on the steel rebar surface and localized corrosion (pit-
ting) is initiated. Pitting corrosion induces localized areas to
become anodic while the rest of the bar becomes cathodic,
this creates an electric potential that augment the corrosion
process. Different studies have shown that the probability of
the initiation increases steadily with increasing chloride levels.
This probability is considered high when exceeding 0.5%
chloride content [4]. Once initiated, the corrosion process does
not stop and the rebars lose progressively their mechanical
resistance until possible structural failure.
B. Concrete electromagnetic parameters assessment using
GPR
A previous experimental assessment carried out with GPR
measurements over nine concrete specimens with xed chlo-
ride and moisture [5] demonstrated that amplitudes of reec-
tions are inuenced by both the chloride and moisture content.
However, it was not possible to discriminate between moisture
and chloride effects. Different inversion strategies assessing
GPR measurements are described in literature [6], [7], [8], [9],
[10]. The dataset measured by Hugenschmidt, was then pro-
cessed using a full-waveform inversion algorithm to estimate
the different medium properties [11]. The obtained quantitative
values, of permittivity and conductivity, enabled to distiguish
between chloride and moisture effects. The procedure was
assuming specimens having homogeneous concentration of
salt inside the concrete.
This paper describes an experiment that consisted in expos-
ing a concrete specimen to a controlled wetting-drying cycle
applying a saline solution on one of its sides. This setup
enabled the concentration of chlorides to be distributed in
gradients inside the specimen. A novel methodology based
on full-waveform inversion was used to estimate material
properties of bistatic off-ground ground penetrating radar
data recorded during the experiment. This paper presents and
discusses the obtained results.
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
In order to evaluate the effect of chlorides and moisture
gradients on ground penetrating radar signals. Experiments
were carried out by measuring traces with xed-height horn
antennas above a test specimen exposed to a controlled wetting
and drying cycle. A saline solution was applied on one of its
sides to generate gradients.
Concrete using GPR Full-Waveform Inversion
978-1-4577-0333-1/11/$26.002011 IEEE
0.965 m
0.9 m
0
.
8
1


m
0
.
1
2

m
0
.
0
8

m
Stainless
steel plate
0
.
7
5

m
Figure 1. Specimen design
A. Concrete specimens
The concrete specimen Fig.1 was cast in a plastic box
insuring impermeability. To represent real cases an interme-
diate class of concrete was used, concrete content was of
325 kg/m
3
and the water/cement was ratio of 0.5. Once cured,
it was stored in a 70% controlled relative humidity chamber
for one year. With this, the water content of the concrete is
assumed to be in equilibrium with its environment. After this
a saline solution with 165g of NaCl per litre of water was
placed on the specimens open surface for 36 days; during
this operation the specimen was covered to avoid evaporation.
At the end of this stage, the superuous chloride solution
was removed from the specimens open surface. Finally, the
specimen was stored back into the 70% relative humidity
chamber for stabilisation. Water content was controlled by
weighing the specimen during the experiment.
This setup allowed that only the concrete specimens open
surface was exposed to water and chlorides circulation. In this
way the concentration of H
2
O and NaCl is distributed in gra-
dients inside the specimen; the specimen is not homogeneous.
The presence of chloride gradient was conrmed by estimating
the free chloride ions content of a control specimen, exposed
to the same cycle, using a water extraction procedure.
B. GPR measurements
GPR measurements were carried out with two off-ground
1.2 GHz horn antennas with an offset of 0.28 m. The antennas
were placed 0.30 m over the concrete slab (Fig. 2). The rst
measurement was used as a reference. It was carried out after
the specimen was stored one year in the controlled relative
humidity chamber, just before chloride inoculation (Table I).
A measurement (0 days) was done immediately after removing
the superuous chloride solution. Then storing the specimen
in the controlled 70% relative humidity chamber allowed the
water present at the specimens open surface to gradually
evaporate until being in equilibrium with the surrounding
relative humidity. Finally, several measurements were carried
out at regular time lapses during the specimens drying phase.
III. FORWARD MODEL
The full-waveform inversion of GPR data is done with an
accurate forward model. It describes the electromagnetic wave
propagation and the electromagnetic properties of the concrete
specimen.
A. Greens functions
1) Greens function for effective wavelet estimation: The
antennas were considered as point sources that emit an effec-
tive wavelet

W. In frequency domain, the electric eld can be
modelled using

E
model
(f) =

G(f,
r
, ).

W(f), (1)
where

G is the Greens function that describes the wave
propagation and reection for a horizontally layered medium
[7], [12]. Since the wavelet is unknown it has to be estimated
using the following Greens function

G(f,
r
, ) =

G
as
(f,
r
, ) (2)
where

G
as
describes the total reection of a wave
propagating from the source to a stainless steel plate and its
backpropagation to the receiver.
2) Greens functions for concrete specimen modeling: The
concrete specimen GPR measurements contain two reections.
The top reection occurs at the air-concrete interface and
the bottom reection at the concrete-stainless steel interface
(Fig.2). The corresponding Greens functions must depict the
source-reector and reector-receiver propagation and the re-
ections occurring at each interface:

G(f,
r
, ) =
_

G
ac
(f,
r
, ) ,

G
cs
(f,
r
, )
_
(3)
where

G
ac
and

G
cs
stand for the propagation of the top and
bottom reection, respectively.
B. Medium properties
Previous works suggested the presence of a frequency
dependent conductivity [7], [11], [13], [14]. To include the
frequency-dependent conductivity in the model the following
equation was used:
(f,
f
c
, ) =
f
c
+
| f f
c
|
f
c
(4)
where f
c
is the center frequency of the GPR system
(1.2 GHz),
f
c
is the reference electric conductivity at the
centre frequency and is the frequency dependent part
of (f,
f
c
, ). The frequency dependence of the relative
permittivity was assumed to be negligible [7].
air
concrete
stainless
steel
offset =0.28 m
[
concrete
,
concrete
]
h=0.30 m
h

=0.40 m
d=0.08 m
concrete relection
stainless steel relection
Transmitter Receiver
direct wave
[
air
,
air
]
Figure 2. Measurement setup
IV. GPR SYSTEM CHARACTERISATION
A. Preprocessing
Due to the GPR measurement conguration the recorded
traces had to be adapted for the inversion.
1) Gain removal: To enhance display and avoid data clip-
ping, due to the different types of reectors, adapted gain
values were given to the recorded traces while measuring.
These gain values were removed once the trace was recorded.
2) Direct wave removal: A direct wave is present in the
original data; it is emitted by the transmitter and propagates
directly to the receiver. The direct wave signal is mixed with
the reections coming from the specimens surface. The direct
wave was removed using a reference measurement, having the
same length (15 ns) and number of samples (1024), containing
no reections.
B. Phase centre
The phase centre is the virtual point from which the electro-
magnetic waves seem to be emitted or received. To estimate
the phase centre, assuming point source and receiver antennas,
a calibration must be performed by measuring the reections
coming from a metal plate for heights varying between 0.1 <
h < 0.65 m. [7], [11].
C. Effective wavelet
The effective wavelet describes the pulse that is emitted
and received by the antennas. To reconstruct this wavelet a
reference GPR measurement is done having a stainless-steel
plate placed on the specimens open surface. Then the effective
wavelet is extracted by spectral division of the reference
measurement and the corresponding Greens function, [10].

W(f) =

E
ref
(f)

G
as
(f)

G
as
(f)

G
as
(f) + 10
10
, (5)
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
400
200
0
200
400
600


Original data
Direct wave
removed
Time [ns]
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
t2 t1
A1
A2
Peak 1
Peak 2
Figure 3. Peak To Peak Analysis, peaks identication.
where

E
ref
(f) is the reference trace with corresponding
height (h + h

= 0.70 m) used for the inversion measurements.

G
as
(f) is the calculated Greens function (Eq. 2) describing
a total reection of the incident wave on the stainless-steel
plate surface. A total reection is assumed using a reection
coefcient of 1. The value 10
10
is used to avoid division
by zero.
V. FULL-WAVEFORM INVERSION METHODOLOGY
A. Peak to peak analysis as starting model
In order to optimise the start values used in the inversion,
a simple analysis was build. This analysis allows estimating
values of the dielectric permittivity
r
and the conductivity .
It is based on a model having several simplications. A non-
dispersive propagation implying the frequency independency
of
r
and is assumed, and no water or chloride gradients
are present; the slab is regarded as homogeneous. It must be
also specied that in this case the thickness of the investigated
concrete slab is known, and is d = 0.08 m.
1) Methodology: The analysis is based on the identication
of the maximum of each reection, the positive peaks (Fig.3).
Each peak is dened by a time and an amplitude value. The
combination of the slab thickness with the peak identication,
allows estimating the rst parameter. That is the peak to peak
velocity:
v =
2d
(t
2
t
1
)
(6)
Where 2d takes into account the two-way travel distance. The
offset of the antenna was not considered. Using the previous
assumptions, that the relative dielectric permittivity
r
is
frequency independent and supposing that the material is non-
magnetic
r
= 1 allows writing:
v =
c
0

r
(7)
With c
0
= 0.3 m/ns the electromagnetic wave velocity
in vacuum and inserting (6) in (7) we obtain the relative
dielectric permittivity
r
of the concrete slab :

r
=
_
c
0
2d
(t
2
t
1
)
_
2
(8)
Measurement Peak to peak Both reections Top reection Bottom reection
Reference
r
= 8.51, =0.06
r
= 8.51, =0.08
r
= 7.84, =0.07
r
= 8.51, =0.08
0 Days*
r
= 10.15, =0.19
r
= 9.89, =0.16
r
= 11.88, =0.23
r
= 9.75, =0.16
7 Days*
r
= 9.63, =0.13
r
= 9.55, =0.14
r
= 9.00, =0.15
r
= 9.55, =0.14
14 Days*
r
= 9.63, =0.12
r
= 9.59, =0.12
r
= 8.68, =0.13
r
= 9.47, =0.14
28 Days*
r
= 9.46, =0.12
r
= 9.47, =0.11
r
= 8.41, =0.13
r
= 9.41, =0.11
58 Days*
r
= 9.29, =0.12
r
= 9.27, =0.12
r
= 8.36, =0.12
r
= 9.22, =0.12
Table I
RESULTS, (* AFTER CHLORIDES)
Data
r

Original trace 8.47 0.06
Direct wave removed 8.51 0.06
Table II
EFFECT OF THE DIRECT WAVE REMOVAL ON PEAK TO PEAK ANALYSIS.
The peak to peak attenuation is given by:
A
2
= A
1
10
2d
, (9)
where A
2
corresponds to the amplitude of peak 2
and A
1
corresponds to the amplitude of peak 1, and the
attenuation coefcient , is given by [15]:
=

2

0
. (10)
With the vacuum impedance,
0
= 377 and
r
the
previously calculated relative dielectric permittivity. Inserting
(9) in (10) returns for the conductivity of an assumed
homogeneous concrete slab:
=

0
2
_

1
2d
log
_
A
2
A
1
__
(11)
Note that for this analysis the inuence of the transmission
and reection coefcients on the amplitude is neglected. For
robustness assessment the Peak to Peak analysis was applied
to the trace before and after direct wave removal. Table II
presents the values estimated for each case. In addition, this
analysis is relative and it can be applied directly to raw
data. The results are independent of time-zero (t
0
) or gain
parameters. However, gain must be constant.
B. Full-waveform inversion
The inversion is based on the minimisation of an objective
function. The minimisation procedure uses the simplex method
[16]. The objective function (12) is built likewise. The model
parameters m describes the wave propagation within the con-
crete slab. They are optimized for n frequencies by minimizing
the mist between the measurement and the synthetic data:
C(m) =
n

i=1
|

E
Data

G(f
i
, m)

W(f
i
) |
n
(12)
The inversion (Fig. 5) is performed in four steps [11].
Fig. 4 shows the results returned at each inversion step
7
7.5
8
8.5
9
9.5
10
10.5
11
11.5
12
-40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

r

Days
Top Reflection
Bottom Reflection


Exposure to chlorides Storage at 70% relative humidity
Reference
Figure 4.
r
evolution of top and bottom reections
of the reference measurement collected at the rst stage
of the experiment (Table I). Because t
0
changes from one
measurement to the other, the rst inversion procedure is
done for t
0
positioning. The mist between the measured air-
concrete reection and

G
ac

W is minimized (3) & (12). The
values of
r
and returned from the Peak to Peak analysis are
assigned to the model, a defaut value is given for the frequency
dependent component, = 0.001. The second steps inverts
for the electromagnetic properties of the top reection. Here,
the values of
r
and obtained from the Peak to Peak analysis
are used as start values. These start values allow to be close
of the global minimum of the solution, optimising that way
calculation time. The third step inverts for the electromagnetic
properties of the bottom surface reection. Here the values
of
r
, and returned from the top reection inversion are
used as start values. Finally, an inversion assuming the slab
homogeneity is carried out. Both reections are considered,
they are minimized for one value of
r
, and . The
values obtained with the previous step are used as start values.
For robustness assessment, all inversions were tested using
different start values. The results converged satisfactorily.
VI. RESULTS
Table I displays the values of the electromagnetic parame-
ters obtained during the experiment. These values are retuned
from the peak to peak analysis and from the inversion of top
bottom and both reections. It can be observed that values
returned from calculations assuming the specimen homoge-
neous, peak to peak analysis and both reections inversion,
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
0
5
Time Inversion
Frequency [GHz]
P
h
a
s
e
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
Time shift: 1.87 ns
Peak to Peak
r = 8.51 = 0.06
Time [ns]
4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
400
200
0
200
400
600


0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
0
5
First Reflection Inversion
Frequency [GHz]
P
h
a
s
e
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
r = 7.84 = 0.07 = 0.052
Time [ns]
4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
400
200
0
200
400
600


0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
0
5
Frequency [GHz]
Time [ns]
P
h
a
s
e
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
Bottom Reflection Inversion


r = 8.51 = 0.08 = 0.014
4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
400
200
0
200
400
600


4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
600
400
200
0
200
400
600


Frequency [GHz]
P
h
a
s
e
r = 8.51 = 0.08 = 0.012
Time [ns]
A
m
p
l
i
t
u
d
e
Measured
Inverted
Both Reflections Invertion
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
5
0
5
Figure 5. Inversion results, measurement Reference, (Table I)
are providing similar values of
r
and . On the other
hand, we can see that the electromagnetic parameters of the
top reection are different than that of the bottom reection,
this is due to the gradients within the concrete specimen.
Moreover, Fig. 4 shows that the values of
r
, returned from
the inversion of top reection, are changing more than the
bottom reection. Values of
r
rise with water ingress during
exposure, and decreases rapidly for the top reection. This
phenomenon is slower when considering the bottom reection.
This difference is due to the fact that water and chloride
circulation at the specimens open surface is controlled by
capillarity and evaporation processes. At the opposite, water
and chloride content at the specimens bottom surface is
controlled by diffusion processes [3].
The use of the full-waveform inversion on each reection
separately, indicated the changes occurring close to each
interface of the specimen. The values of
r
are consistent
with the one provided by literature for similar cases, [17],
[18].
VII. CONCLUSION
An experiment was carried out having a concrete specimen
exposed to a controlled wetting and drying cycle. It allowed
that only the concrete specimens open surface was exposed to
water and chlorides circulation. In this way the concentration
of H
2
O and NaCl is distributed in gradients within the speci-
men. Measurements, using 1.2 GHz horn antennas, were done
at regular steps during the wetting-drying cycle. The dataset
was processed using an updated full-waveform inversion to the
dataset. Signal preprocessing procedures, and an analysis using
a simplied model improved the inversion procedure. The
Peak to Peak analysis provided optimized start values for the
rst steps of the full-waveform inversion. The inversion proce-
dure allowed considering each reection separately, returning
estimations of the electromagnetic parameters close to each
interface. The electromagnetic parameters of each reections
are changing during the experiment; this can be linked with
different types of water and chloride circulation occurring at
the top and bottom surface of the specimen. The values of

r
are consistent with the ones provided by literature.
Future work will consist in inverting for both reections
considering a gradient distribution. The analysis will be also
applied to a multi-layered case.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The presented work was funded by the Swiss National
Science Foundation, Grant Nr. 200021-119797/1.
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