Aggregate type identification in concrete compounds using microwave transmission line and ANN

Growing concrete market, increasing variety of concrete products and requirements for higher quality calls for a fast and accurate moisture measurement technology. A fast and accurate method for aggregate type identification in concrete compounds is presented in this paper. A transmission line and time domain sampling method for data acquisition is used. In order to find the relationship between material type and signal spectrum curve an artificial neural network classifier (ANN) is used. A total of 13 mixtures of three materials (sand, crushed granite stone and dolomite) mixed in different proportions were identified using the proposed method. Experiments have confirmed the posibility to use transmission line combined with ANN in material independent moisture measurement systems.