A comparison of methods to evaluate mass transport in damaged mortar

The service life of reinforced concrete (RC) structures is directly influenced by the transport properties of concrete. These transport properties are adversely affected by the presence of cracks. Therefore, for accurate service life estimation of RC structures the effect of cracks on mass transport needs to be understood and quantified. To quantify the effect of cracks, different measurement methods have been developed. In this paper, we compare different mass transport measurement methods for quantifying the effect of damage, and investigate which method is more sensitive and provides the most information on the effect of damage.In this work, damage was induced by freeze-thaw in mortar specimens. Mass transport properties were measured using electrical resistivity, rapid chloride permeability, sorptivity, drying, air permeability, water permeability, and desorption isotherm. The results indicate that the measured effect of damage depends on the mechanisms of transport used in the measurement technique, and therefore, different measurement techniques do not necessarily provide the same measure of the effect of damage. The water and air permeability are comparatively more sensitive to the presence of damage.