Introduction

The bedding layer of subgrade plays a key role on stability and durability of railway. The quality of
subgrade soil layer directly affected the safety and the comfort of train running. Ground penetrating radar
(GPR) was widely used in subgrade quality detection, which had the characteristics of high efficiency,
high accuracy and non-destructive.

Literature studied: The first three mostly studied papers are (Jian et al., 2014), (Benedetto et al., 2017)
and ( Rodés, 2015) respectively.

Gaps: The bedding layer of subgrade was usually assumed to be uniform in the processing and
interpretation of radar data. However, the ingredients were made up of soil, synthetic building materials
and so on. The study on the relationship between moisture content and radar signal by physical
simulation, as well as other factors (curing time, temperature, pressure) were not enough, more systematic
physics experiments were needed to do.
Problem studied: To study the influence of subgrade soil on radar signals.
Proposed solution: This study aimed to analyze about EM characteristics of soil cement and its
influencing factor through experiments and simulation
Methodology: includes materials, sample preparation, GPR equipment and laboratory testing.
Materials: P.O.42.5 cement, tap water were used in this experiment. The cement met the quality standard
and loss on ignition less than 5%.
Sample preparation: The soil should be first dried in a drying oven, mixing amount was 5% of the mass
of cement. The soil cement was added tap water with different compaction. Then, specimens were cured
in the standard curing room.
GPR equipment: The experimental tests were performed using SIR-20 air-coupled pulsed radar systems
all manufactured by GSSI with central frequencies of 200MHz, 900 MHz, 1500 MHz, respectively

Laboratory testing: Contains drying and screening experiment, which was a method used to screen
subgrade soil with a fine sieve and beating experiment in which the average moisture content was
calculated and non-destructive testing in which specimens of soil cement were tested using radar antenna.

Results:
The maximum dry density: The dry density of wet soil with different moisture content was calculated
l
using the formula: Id= Where: Id : the dry density (g/cm³), l : the density of the wet soil (g/cm³)
l+w
and  : was the moisture content ( %). According to experimental results, the dry density and the
moisture content were obtained as follows
No Moisture Density(g/cm3) Dry
content(%) density(g/cm3)
1 4.61 1.65 1.580
2 6.45 1.73 1.630
3 9.73 1.94 1.768
4 12.67 1.99 1.766
5 15.43 2.03 1.759
6 18.27 1.96 1.742

Experiments on the dielectric properties: The dielectric constant of soil cement with different moisture
contents changed for 7, 14 and 28 days respectively. Under 80% compaction degree, he dielectric
constant of specimens increased by 11.5% 7 days, 10.4% for 14 days and 5.6% for 28 days. So it
illustrated that increasing rate of the dielectric constant decreased continually with curing ages. In
addition, the dielectric constant of samples was changed from 4.39 to 5.88 at 7 days, 4.44 to 5.25 at 14
days and 4.14 to 4.95 at 28 days.
Simulation of electromagnetic features with moisture content: The propagation characteristics would
be changed with ‘impurity’ contents. To study the influence of moisture content on radar signal
propagation, an abnormal unit with high dielectric constant and high conductivity was randomly
distributed in the homogeneous medium.
Simulation of electromagnetic features with different frequency: The vertical resolution of GPR to
v
surface layer was approximately 0.1~0.3 wavelength. The wavelength of GPG : ƛ= Where, λ :
f
wavelength, f : frequency and c : propagation velocity in vacuum.
Field measurement analysis the dielectric constant: The ground penetrating radar was used to detect
the railway subgrade soil layer. Percometer was used to detect the dielectric constant of railway subgrade
at different positions.
GPR wave: 900MHz radar antenna was used to detect shallow subgrade.

Conclusion: By studying the influence of water content, aging time and compactness on the dielectric
constant of cement-soil, the variation characteristics of electromagnetic wave can be judged, which can be
used as an important basis for judging the state of railway subgrade. Electromagnetic waves were
sensitive to the water content, so the ground penetrating radar technology was more suitable for detecting
the distribution of moisture content.The dielectric constant of samples decreased with the increase of
curing ages.