ASR vs. DEF vs. Sulfate Attack: How to Tell Map Cracking Apart in the Field
You are standing in front of a parking deck, a bridge pier, or a foundation wall covered in a fine, interconnected web of cracks — the classic "map cracking" pattern. Here is the trap: that pattern can be produced by at least three completely different deterioration mechanisms, each with a different cause, a different prognosis, and a different and incompatible repair strategy. Diagnose it wrong, and you do not just waste the repair budget — you let the real mechanism keep advancing under a fix that was never going to work.
