Electromagnetic Characterizations of Cement Using Free Space Technique for the Application of Buried Object Detection

Abstract

A free space technique is invoked to characterize the electromagnetic properties of different types of cement: Mortar only, mortar with welded wired meshes (BRC) for concrete reinforcement (Concrete), and cement immersed with PVC tubes at the Ku-band from 12 GHz to 18 GHz. The base mixture of the prepared samples is based on cement, sand, and water, as a binding agent, to be as mortar. The measurement setup consists of highly focused transmitting and receiving horn antennas that are connected, respectively, to port 1 and port 2 of the Professional Network Analyzer (Agilent PNA 8720). The samples are inserted between the two antennas to measure, S11 and S12, the S-parameters. Using Agilent’s open ended coaxial probe, the dielectric constant and loss factor are measured at different locations. A Finite Element Method (FEM) based on the formulations of High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) is conducted to validate the measured results. The measured dielectric constant and loss factor are assigned in the HFSS simulations. Good agreements are obtained for the simulated and measured S-parameters within relative errors less than 1% and 2%, respectively.