Comparison of methods for measuring infiltration rate of pervious concrete

Abstract

The infiltration rate of both a pervious concrete material itself and a pervious pavement system are important values for understanding how a pervious concrete pavement will drain water. While there is currently a standard test method to measure the infiltration rate of a pervious concrete pavement system (ASTM C1701), there is no standard test procedure for measuring the infiltration rate of only the pervious concrete material. The goal of this research was to compare various methods for measuring the infiltration rate of pervious concrete in isolation. The constant head, falling head, and a modified ASTM C1701 test were compared along with a horizontal version of the constant head test for multiple pervious concrete cylinders from the same mix. It was found that the sample-to-sample variation in infiltration rate is typically much larger than the experimental uncertainty present in a given test method. The infiltration rate depended non-linearly on head level, demonstrating that flows were in the transition flow regime between laminar and turbulent.Therefore, test results are presented in terms of both infiltration rate and modified Darcy’s law parameters.