Nondestructive Evaluation of Thermal Damage in Concrete by Single-Sided Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 23, Issue 1
Abstract
A new technology to coat concrete with coherent layers of glass by flame-spraying is currently developed at the Institutes of Building Materials Research and Mineral Engineering of RWTH Aachen University in Germany through a joint program. A major factor influencing the pull-off strength of the flame-sprayed glass coating is thermally induced damage in the underlying concrete substrate. In this article, the authors present a nondestructive test method using single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to evaluate the thermally induced damage in concrete specimens. The particular NMR device used in this project primarily detects water and can qualitatively assess the water content as well as the relative size of water-filled voids such as pores and cracks. To do so, the specimens are water saturated and subsequently analyzed by NMR. Changes in the NMR-signal are interpreted in terms of change in porosity and development of cracks inside the cement stone as a function of depth from the concrete surface.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the German Research Foundation for the funding of the project (DFG), Prof. Conradt, Swantje Thiele, and Kirsten Hellmann from GHI for the great cooperation, and Petrik Galvosas, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Wellington, and his working group for providing the ILT algorithm used in this work.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 23 • Issue 1 • March 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 27, 2015
Accepted: Apr 15, 2016
Published online: Jun 30, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 30, 2016
Published in print: Mar 1, 2017
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