Properties of water leakage through concrete slabs with a parallel gap

This paper describes the experimental results of water flow in concrete crack, in order to get the fundamental data on the barrier effect of the concrete material on the nuclide migration. Concrete slabs with a parallel gap, instead of the unidentified native cracks were used in the experiment and the water leakage through the certain gap was studied in detail. It is recognized that the water flow through cracks can be generally treated as a laminar flow, thus the theoretical equation derived from Navier-Stokes equation can be applied in the flow analysis. According to the theory, the amount of water flow through the crack is described to be proportional both to the third power of crack width and to the pressure gradient, and also to be inversely proportional to the coefficient of water viscosity. We have confirmed that the equation can be applied to the water flow through even 0.01 cm width gap in concrete by the experiments, measurement of the water flow under the conditions of constant head and gradually changing temperatures and also at the constant temperatures. (author)