Complex resistivity tomography in laboratory and field studies – a promising NDT tool

Moisture ingress is one of the major damaging factors for building material. Today, the only approved way to assess such damages is the oven-drying Darr-method, which is essentially destructive. At BAM substantial progress has been made using the geophysical complex resistivity (CR) method, which can be applied non-destructively and provides spatial information along 2D sections rather than punctual along one borehole. Considerable advantages of CR are its sensitivity to textural properties as well as the pore fluid chemistry of wet porous media. In a comprehensive laboratory study and later in field scale experiments it could be shown that CR might even be able to distinguish between salt content and saturation degree in only one measurement.