Visualization and quantification of water movement in porous cement-based materials by real time thermal neutron radiography: theoretical analysis and experimental study (Q617103)

In this research, the thermal neutron radiography is utilized to achieve visualization and quantification of time depend water movement including water penetration and moisture vapor in porous cement-based materials through theoretical analysis and experimental study. The concluding remarks of the authors are as follows. 1) Neutron radiography is a powerful method to observe water movement in porous cement-based materials. By formulating the process in terms of system transfer functions, a simple and efficient procedure for the interpretation of the complex transmission process is provided, in which a scattering correction based on point scattered functions is applied. It profites from the high moisture detection sensitivity which is physically inherent in the neutronic method. 2) Through experimental study, it is validated that neutron radiography technique can not only visualize time dependent water movement in uncracked and cracked cement-based materials, but also quantitatively calculate the spatial moisture distributions. 3) Water penetration into porous cement-based materials followed the linear function of square root of time only within a limited time. After about four hours, the coefficient of water penetration decreased gradually which is fitted well by a hyperbolic function.