CANIRT help TO DETECT SUBSURFACE UTILITY MAINS ?

[akm]

We have a situation in a parking lot of rectangular size of 300,000 sqft, and we need to locate the utility mmains underground at 5-6 ft. It is known that there are electrical duct bank under a concrete vault some 5 feet below, and a few 4 inches water PVC pipe carrying ambient water. It is also assumed that gas pipeline network does exoist in this piece of land. The soil contains silt to some extent.
Can anybody suggest, if IRT can help us detecting the untility mains, if yes, precisely what should be our steps and srelection of techniques. We have tried GPR & em , but could not get encouraging results.
Thanks in advance to the peers of this forum.
Ak

 

I dont feel that IR would be a viable technology to use in this application. The piping and any junctions would be the same temperature as the ground therefore no image would be seen. I would think that ground penetrating radar would have worked. I would recommend checking into other NDT meathods.

Good Luck

 

[hotspot]

Thermal Image is right on track. Several of my clients are water utilities and would give their left arm if ir could find leaks in small pipes not to mention the piping alone! Alot of work is being expended in developing a good ground system, it just has not come up yet. For the moment, local utilities are using different forms of sonar and ground penetrating radar to locate non ferous buried objects like piping and casement. There are many articles and companies on the web discussing these methods and perhaps they will help. Key on ground penetrating radar for starts. Good luck and I hope this helps.