PET Decision-Supporting Tools

This post discusses some of the distinctive tools that come with your PET, the pile integrity tester. The fundamental approach of the pile integrity test relies on the user's expertise in analyzing the reflectogram produced by the hammer impact. Piletest has developed additional supportive tools for the PET to address noisy and imperfect test results.

In this blog, I will cover 4 of them. PileWave - Is the WebApp simulator developed by Piletest. It allows you to add defects to a perfect cylindrical pile and see how these affect the reflectogram. By "playing" with the simulator, you can learn how different types of pile defects (i.e., necking, bulging, softbottom) appear on the reflectogram, and make you knowledgeable when you see them on a real pile reflectogram. PileWave is free for all and can be accessed here.

PileWave example

Signal Match button

Signal Matching - The PET signal matching tool is the next step in using a simulation to support your decision. This unique tool looks at the pile reflectogram and tries to build a pile profile (like the left pane in PileWave). This process is also known as "signal matching". It is an iterative process, where the software tries to guess the pile profile, creates its reflectogram, and compares it to the real one. Then it tries to do it again with a small incremental change to the pile profile, hoping the generated new reflectogram will look a little more like the real reflectogram, and so on.

Signal match screenshot

The screenshot shows the live matching process.

The blue reflectogram is the measured test result, while the orange line is the simulated reflectogram of the generated pile profile in gray.

The match quality in percentages and the number of iterations are marked in yellow. Match quality above 75% usually shows a pretty good match (100% is perfect) The number of generations can go into the hundreds.

Repetition Marks—A decision-supporting and analysis tool that helps mark/measure repetitive features on the reflectogram that indicate the potential location of a flaw in the pile. In many cases, this can also be seen in the FFT results as a peak at the same pile location.

Presenting the measurement of repetition marks makes the repetitive signal on the reflectogram more understandable and easier to explain to the owner. In the example below, the repetitive signal shows a repetitive pattern at about 1.5 meters.

Combining this information with the signal match profile can better explain the magnitude of a defect and its location.

For any questions or clarification about the content of this blog, contact our support team at support@piletest.com

For a detailed tutorial on PET results analysis practices, see the 1-hour webinar below.