Presenting a New Method for Measuring the Chloride Ion Permeability of Concrete and Comparing With Others

The paper describes the development of a very rapid test that measures the permeability of concrete to chloride ions. Once sample conditioning has been done, up to 15 concrete samples can be tested in an hour using a single conductivity cell. The test involves saturating a concrete sample with a 30% NaCl solution, before measuring the conductivity of the sample. By saturating samples with a highly conductive solution, they have virtually the same pore water conductivity. Different concrete samples yield different conductivities primarily because of differences in their pore structure. The measured conductivity is related to the diffusibility ratio as well as to the chloride diffusivity of the concrete.