The growing popularity of pervious concrete (PC) pavement applications has increased the need for establishing its mechanical properties and understanding their relationships with measurable properties for the purposes of designing layer thickness.
Pervious concrete is desired for its role in stormwater management and runoff control and is often used for parking lots, ferry terminal holding lanes, low volume roads, and other light-duty applications. Pervious concrete contains little or no sand, creating a substantial void content, and that produces a system of highly permeable, interconnected voids that drains quickly. That characteristic provides many environmental, economic, and structural advantages.
To determine mechanical properties, the researchers prepared two aggregate types of PC specimens with various porosities. Hardened porosity, compressive, and flexural strength tests were carried out on all PC specimens. By supplementing the test results with results from past research studies conducted at WSU, as well as results documented in the literature, the researchers developed multi-variable linear regression models to predict strength properties for pavement thickness design.
Additionally, the researchers developed a recommended thickness design database for low-traffic-volume PC pavements. It is based on a fatigue model for conventional concrete and four traffic categories adopted from the American Concrete Institute guide for the design of conventional concrete parking lots. Although the database will need to be updated by applying a fatigue model developed specifically for pervious concrete, it will help designers evaluate required PC pavement thickness for common pavement applications on the basis of expected traffic volumes, axle load configurations, and PC mechanical properties.
Authors:
Somayeh Nassiri
Othman Al Shareedah
WSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Sponsor: WSDOT
WSDOT Technical Monitor: Mark Russell
WSDOT Project Manager: Lu Saechao