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Specialised Ground Penetrating Radar for railway, road and tunnel surveys. Transport engineering services and construction companies can benefit from our wide range of products for the non-destructive investigation of:

  • Railway beds;
  • Roadbeds;
  • Airport runway pavement;
  • Road and railway tunnel structures;
  • Bridges.

Products are:

  • Railway Specific;
  • Road Specific.

Road Engineering

 

This system has been designed to perform detailed pavement inspection. The IDS system is available as either a single double frequency antenna unit or as an array composed of 2 or 3 of these units. The two frequencies used are 600 MHz for characterising relatively deep layers and the choice of either 1600 or 2000 MHz for characterising asphalt or concrete pavements respectively.

The method chosen depends on your requirements in terms of layer detection performance and survey speed. A mechanical support is supplied to enable this special antenna to operate in contact with the ground for high accuracy surveys.

IDS has also developed the specific IDSGRED/IN/LAYERING software for this application.

Rail Engineering

SafeRailSystem (SRS): an integrated solution allowing the user to autonomously inspect railway ballast for renewal and maintenance.
 

 
SRS is the higher speed radar system for the inspection of Ballast quality specialized for the following application:
 
  • Continuous mapping of ballast thickness;
  • Location of areas with insufficient bearing capacity;
  • Differentiation between clean and fouled ballast;
  • Detection of sections with drainage problems.

System composition:
  • High speed radar control unit;
  • Three or four antenna array;
  • Data Logger and visualization system;
  • Doppler radar position encoder;
  • Video camera synchronized to radar data;
  • Dedicated post-processing software module for an efficient interpretation of SRS data;
  • Customer training and support program to introduce the user to the autonomous and efficient operation of SRS;
Radar Antennas can be mounted on any kind of rail vehicle and enables the user to detect undertrack problems which can cause track geometry anomalies. It provides complete information about the ballast status.
 
Benefits:
  •  Easy interpretation of ballast status trough automatic tools;
  • Improved track maintenance decision making;
  • Reduce current costs fro track investigations procedures maintenance and renewal operations;
  • Continuous monitoring increases network management profitability;
  • Improved work specification to less reworking.
 
The acquisition laptop and control systems are easily installed inside the train cabin. The highly integrated hardware/software setup permits the acquisition process to be performed by a single operator.
 
System features:
  • Three or four simultaneous profile covering the whole track;
  • Accurate positioning trough Doppler encoder and GPS positioning;
  • Synchronised video and position assist in quick interpretation of results.

 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION
RADAR ACQUISITION DAD SRS PLUS, with interleaved multiplexing 1800 scan/sec
NUMBER OF COLLECTED PROFILES Up to 4
ANTENNA FREQUENCY Typical configuration 400 MHz
POSITIONING Metric wheel and/or GPS interface
COLLECTION SPEED > 190 Km/h (4 profiles simultaneously)
MAXIMUM SCAN LENGHT Unlimited collected profile lenght, no need to stop the train
POWER SUPPLY 10-15 Volts
VIEDO CAMERA Synchronized radar and video data
ENVIRONMENTAL  IP 65


Post processing software:

SafeRailSystem includes an unique post processing software - SRS DPA - dedicated to the railway foundation for ballast inspection and analysis. This software includes advanced automatic "pattern recognition" algorithms, which assist the evaluation of ballast status and an automatic function for layers interface detection.
The operator can visualise, simultaneously, up to 4 parallel radar maps and run these sections with an automatic scrolling. All the radar data can be selected in a rapid and efficient way. The user can introduce and analyse drilling information.
 
  •  SRS DPA : Data processor module.
  •  SRS DA : Data analyser and reporting module.

SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION: SRS DPA
  SRS DPA including:
SRS DP (data Processor)
SRS DA (data Analyser and Reporting:
RADAR PROCESSING SOFTWARE
  • Elimination of disturbances due to the sleepers
  • Automatic data processing according to a predefined macro
  • Management of GPS data and video frames
  • Automatic detection of layer interfaces
  • Automatic calibration of radar propagation velocity with core data
  • Insertion of assets along the track (e.g. switches, crossing, etc.)
  • Assist the operator in evaluating track characteristics:
 
  • Ballast fouling
  • Ballast bed moisture
  • Moisture distribution within the ballast
  • Evenness of track bed basis
OUTPUT DATA
  •  Immediate visualization of ballast characteristics
 
  • Stratigraphy
  • Ballast fouling levels
  • Ballast moisture levels
  • Ondulation levels
  • Position of assets
  • Core samples
  • Video data
Rail Brochure  Rail Brochure  299Kb