Estimation of water gradient and concrete durability indicators using capacitive and electrical probes
Résumé
Maintenance and inspection of concrete structures are increasingly important issues considering the high number of aging structures and infrastructures. Non-destructive techniques (NDT) are fast and allow monitoring the structure during all of its life service. NDT are sensitive to various concrete properties, among which is water content. This latter is a significant parameter of concrete pathologies, an accurate estimation of its value is therefore important. Our research focuses on two NDT: capacitive and electrical probes, both of which are highly sensitive to water content. By varying the size and the spacing of the electrodes of both devices, we attain multiple investigation depths and obtain raw integrated measurements from the studied structure surface. An inversion procedure is then applied to the raw data to obtain profiles in the concrete. Electrical resistivity tomography was obtained using commercial software, while for capacitive NDT an original inversion procedure was developed. After calibration, the two NDT allow the determination of quantitative water saturation degree profiles into concrete. The aims of this paper are to present the two easurement and inversion procedures and to validate them on concrete slabs submitted to an imbibition process and controlled by reference methods.