Investigation of moisture transport in concrete using a single-side nuclear magnetic resonance testing system

Hydrogen-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR) is a powerful tool to determine the amount of moisture in a porous material as concrte by measuring the amplitude of the NMR signal, which is proportional to the number of hydrogen nuclei in the specimen. For the measurements presented here a NMR-instrumentation was used which offers the feasibility to do NMR measurements external to the probe. The aim of this study was the investigation of water ingress in concrte by scanning the moisture profile of the speciments at different conditioning stages. Three types of concrete cubes have been under investigation. One type with a water/cement ratio (w/c) of 0.4 and no iron slabs, one type with w/c=0.4 and iron slabs at different location in the specimen and on type with w/c=0.6 and no iron slabs.