Nondestructive Investigation of Wet Building Material: Multimethodical Approach
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 24, Issue 5
Abstract
Building stones are porous media and they can deteriorate through moisture ingress and secondary damage such as crystallization of soluble salts. Not only is this due to the increasing number of flood events in the past years but also structural damages of houses from activity such as leakage or rising moisture (groundwater) are the main causes. The potential benefit of several nondestructive testing methods to assess water damage in building stone has been studied in a field-scale experiment. Three testing walls made of fired clay brick, sandstone, and spongilite were flooded and their drying behavior monitored using infrared thermography, complex resistivity, ground penetrating radar, and ultrasonics. The results were compared to the average moisture content determined by gravimetric weighing of the specimens. Qualitatively, the results of the different nondestructive testing methods matched well. But in terms of quantitative data, some scatter was observed and the results should be viewed with care. Collecting time-consuming calibration data would help to overcome this problem, but especially when dealing with historic building structures, this is not always possible in practice.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded under the grant of the FP6 Framework European Research Project Cultural Heritage Protection Against Flood (CHEF) Contract No. UNSPECIFIED044251. The writers thank the engineering office “Dr. Zauft” in Potsdam (Germany) for making their Hf-sensor probe set available for the four testing campaigns in Prague. The help of Dr. Francisco Romero (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) proofreading the paper is greatly appreciated.
References
DIN. (1977). “Pruefung von Holz, Bestimmung des Feuchtegehalts.” DIN 52 183.
Drdácký, M., and Slížková, Z. (2005). “Damages and failures of historic materials and structures from natural hazards.” Proc., 2nd H & mH, Int. Conf. on Vulnerability of 20th Century Cultural Heritage to Hazards and Prevention Measures, CICOP, Firenze, Italy, 19–28.
Göller, A., Handro, A., Heinrich, D., Landgraf, J., Schnieber, M., and Wagner, J. (1999a). “Handheld-Mikrowellen-Feuchtemessgeräte der MOIST Serie—Ein neues Konzept der Materialfeuchtemessung.” Proc., DGzfP-Fachtagung, Bauwerksdiagnose, German Society of NDT, München, Germany, 213–223.
Göller, A., Handro, A., Heinrich, D., Landgraf, J., Schnieber, M., and Wagner, J. (1999b). “Leckageortung und Detektion von Feuchteverteilungen mit den MOIST-Geräten.” Proc., DGzfP-Fachtagung, Bauwerksdiagnose, German Society of NDT, München, Germany, 225–232.
Hall, C., and Hoff, W. D. (2002). Water transport in brick, stone and concrete, Taylor & Francis, New York.
Kupfer, K. (2005). Electromagnetic aquametry: Electromagnetic wave interaction with water and moist substances, Springer, Berlin
Maierhofer, C., et al. (2008). “Cultural heritage protection against flood—A European FP6 research project.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Structural Analysis of Historic Construction—Preserving Safety and Significance, D. D’Ayala and E. Fodde, eds., Vol. 1, Taylor & Francis, London, 109–117.
Maierhofer, C., and Kind, T. (2003). “Application of georadar for the determination of moisture content and distribution in masonry.” Proc., RILEM TC 177-MDT Workshop on On-Site Control and Evaluation of Masonry Structures, L. Binda and R. C. de Vekey, eds., RILEM, Cedex, Rance, 227–238.
Maierhofer, C., and Koepp, C., eds. (2006). “Onsite investigation techniques for the structural evaluation of historic masonry buildings.” Onsiteformasonry Project Rep. EUR21696EN, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
Maierhofer, C., and Wolter, B. (2001). “Non-destructive testing methods for moisture determination.” Proc., NDT in Progress: Meeting of NDT Experts, Czech Society for NDT, Prague, Czech Republic.
Onsiteformasonry. (2004). “Small sample testing, research report.” Rep. D9.6 of ONSITEFORMASONRY Project EVK4-2001-00091, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium.
Plagge, R. (2003). “Bestimmung von Materialfeuchte und Salzgehalt in kapillar porösen Materialien mit TDR.” Kolloquium mit Workshop Innovative Feuchtemessung in Forschung und Praxis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Plagge, R. and Renger, M. (1996). “Kombinierte Bestimmung der elektrischen Leitfähigkeit und des Wassergehaltes in Böden, DFG-Abschlußbericht, Berlin, 137 (in German).
Radic Research. (2007). “Technical specification SIP 256c.” ⟨http://www.radic-research.de/Flyer_SIP256C_161104.pdf⟩ (Apr. 10, 2009).
Rudolph, M., Schaurich, D., and Wiggenhauser, H. (1993). Feuchteprofilmessungen mit Mikrowellen im Mauerwerk, Feuchtetag, Berlin (in German).
Telford, W., Geldart, L., and Sherif, R. (1990). Applied geophysics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 24 • Issue 5 • October 2010
Pages: 462 - 472
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 30, 2009
Accepted: Jan 19, 2010
Published online: Jan 22, 2010
Published in print: Oct 2010
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.