The depth dependent mass water content distribution in the larger brick-shaped specimens was determined by means of MRS in a similar manner as in the shrinkage tests on concrete prisms. The lower part of Fig. 11 shows the arrangement of MRS 7 and MRS 6 in
the brick-shaped specimen of Fig. 5. In Fig. 12 the mass water content distribution is plotted for selected times along the two consecutively placed MRS 7 and MRS 6 in one of the brick-shaped specimens. The mass water contents in the brick-shaped specimen, shown in Fig. 12, were measured during drying until the top surface of the specimen was prepared by high-pressure water jetting, as described in Section 3.1.3. Ideally, at the end of moist curing (t=81 days) the measured mass water content should be uniform throughout the specimen. The measured deviations from the expected uniform distribution can be attributed to different degrees of compaction of the concrete through the specimen depth. The measured values of MRS 6 show a uniform decrease of the mass water content in the inner region of the brick-shaped concrete specimen, i.e. at distances from the surface larger than about 50 mm (Fig. 11), from initially 6.75% to 5.4% after 1 year of drying. During the second year of drying the latter value decreased to 5.0%.