Investigation of Drying of Building Materials by Single-sided NMR

Abstract

Single-sided NMR devices, like NMR MOUSE (MObile Universal Surface Explorer), are designed to allow NMR surface measurements to be conducted on arbitrarily large samples, and are therefore valuable tools to evaluate non-invasively moisture content “inside” a planar object. In this work, we aim to perform “in situ” studies of moisture transport in building materials during drying experiments with NMR MOUSE. The local moisture content was monitored over time and mapped over sample thickness with a depth resolution of 0.5mm and a maximum penetration depth of 15mm. In addition, NMR MOUSE allows measuring transverse relaxation time T2. Experimental results show that moisture content is homogeneously distributed over the thickness, which indicates that moisture is transferred through capillary processes. Furthermore, transverse relaxation time distribution measurements revealed that the drainage of pore water occurs sequentially from larger pores to smaller pores.