Author(s)

Tadao Tanabe¹, Tomoya Kanai¹, Kenta Kuroo¹, Tomoya Nishiwaki², Yutaka Oyama¹

¹Department of Materials Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
²Department of Architecture and Building Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

Concrete is the most widely used for construction materials in the world. Water content of concrete is an important parameter in terms durability of concrete structures. Terahertz (THz) waves, for which concrete is a porous and absorbable material, have been studied in order to establish a new non-contact inspection technology for maintenance of concrete structures. In this study, THz transmittance and reflectance of concrete in drying process were measured with a 60 GHz GUNN diode and absorption coefficient is analyzed for concrete with various water contents. It is shown that quantitative detection below 10% is possible for the water content at surface area of concrete.

Concrete, Water Content, Terahertz Wave, Noncontact Inspection

Tanabe, T. , Kanai, T. , Kuroo, K. , Nishiwaki, T. and Oyama, Y. (2018) Non-Contact Terahertz Inspection of Water Content in Concrete of Infrastructure Buildings. World Journal of Engineering and Technology, 6, 275-281. doi: 10.4236/wjet.2018.62016.