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• A method for preparing cement mortar with diverse numbers of internal cracks was proposed. • Permeability and porosity for the samples under diverse stress states were measured. • The stress-dependent permeability and porosity for the prepared samples was analysed. In this paper, gas permeability and porosity for the prepared cement mortar samples with diverse numbers of internal cracks under diverse pore pressure during confining pressure loading and unloading was measured. According to the outcomes of experiments, the following findings were obtained: Klinkenberg correction is appliable to the modification on gas permeability of cement mortar samples containing different number of internal cracks to obtain the intrinsic permeability, with the quadratic equation (Coefficient of Determination R2 is above than 0.92) having a better performance than that of Klinkenberg equation; Owing to the increase in the equivalent pore radius of seepage passages, Klinkenberg Effect of the cement mortar samples reduces when the number of internal cracks rises. When the number of internal cracks rises from 0 to 12, the slippage factor decreases over 90 %; When the number of internal cracks is high, the same changing extent in the number of internal cracks can lead to higher influence on the intrinsic permeability than that when the number of internal cracks is low. The variation magnitude of intrinsic permeability when the number of internal cracks increases from 6 to 12 is around 3–10 times higher than that when the number goes up from 0 to 6; When confining pressure increases, the sensitivity of intrinsic permeability to the changes in confining pressure reduces. The variation magnitude of intrinsic permeability when confining pressure is loaded from 0 MPa to 25 MPa is 5–10 times higher than that when confining pressure is loaded from 25 MPa to 45 MPa; Owing to the permanent deformation of pores and cracks, under the same confining pressure, the intrinsic permeability and porosity during the unloading stage are less than those during the loading stage, respectively; The sub-cubic law (R2 is above than0.90) is able to describe gas seepage in cement mortar specimens with different number of internal cracks more precisely compared to the cubic law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]