Measurement of Water Content in Portland Cement Concrete

Abstract

Warping of portland cement concrete (PCC) pavements is the result of temperature and/or moisture gradients in the pavement structure. So far, the focus has been on studying and modeling temperature gradients caused by the relative ease of measuring temperature gradients in PCC as compared with the measurement of moisture gradients. This paper provides the methodology for determining the moisture content in nonreinforced PCC pavements by relating the moisture content to the dielectric constant. This relationship is a second-order polynomial equation with a 95% confidence band for a range of water contents from 4 to 11%.