Electrodynamic Computer Model of a Metal Rod in a Concrete Medium Detection

Abstract

The main aim of the present work is to describe a generalized electrodynamic model of the specific device operation, which provides detection and measurement of the geometric characteristics of the reinforcement cage in a concrete structure. The result of this study is the design of the device’s receiving-transmitting path that is optimal in a number of parameters, as well as a signal processing algorithm based on the operation of an artificial neural network trained on the generalized computer model output data. In addition to the main functionality of the device being developed, which consists in structureroscopy by the method of radar holography, useful target characteristics may be obtained during its operation: electrophysical parameters of concrete, structural defects, visualization of an object, etc. To solve this problem, on the basis of general radar principles, frequency-modulated continuous wave was chosen as the operating mode of the device. To create an electrodynamic model, the computer-aided design environment Pathwave EM Design (EMPro) 2021 was used. The developed generalized model may be optimized for a large number of parameters. In addition to the position and number of receiving antennas, the list of optimization variables may include parameters of the transmitting antenna (ray width, directivity, near-field distance), their number (i.e., the capacity of the MIMO system), power on the transmitting side, etc. The proposed scheme of the device is presented as the main result.