Realistic Railway Ballast FDTD Simulations for Ground Penetrating Radar Railway Track Inspection

Abstract

This work presents an effective way to model realistic railway ballast conditions that can be incorporated in a FDTD EM solver for GPR applications. The results are compared with real measurements in controlled environments that try to replicate the models. Preliminary results look promising, and there is a valuable potential for its application in a wide range of topics related with this technology like: sensor design, acquisition methodologies, algorithm testing, machine learning approaches or inverse imaging.