Experimental investigation of the use of pervious concrete on high volume roads

Abstract

Although pervious concrete (PC) has many positive contributions such as reducing noise pollution, recharge groundwater, reducing urban heat island effect, it has not been used at the desired level due to its limited strength properties and lack of standards to be used on high volume roads yet. The purpose of the study was to develop optimum pervious concrete mixtures that can be used as road paving material on high volume roads. For this reason, the Technical Specification for Concrete Road Pavements of General Directorate of Turkish Highways was taken into considered. The effect of aggregate/binder (A/B) ratio on the strength of pervious concrete with different aggregate sizes was investigated. The amount of water that gave the least clogging at the bottom of the samples was chosen as the optimum amount of water. Porosity, compressive strength, tensile strength, bending strength, and abrasion resistance tests of silica fume added pervious concrete with different aggregate sizes (2–4 mm, 4–8 mm and 8–16 mm) and different (A/B) ratios (2, 2.5 and 3) were performed. The results showed that the pervious concrete produced with the appropriate (A/B) ratio and aggregate size provides the required strength requirement even for concrete roads and can be used as a concrete road pavement material. The results also showed that both the (A/B) ratio and the aggregate size significantly affect the strength properties of pervious concrete mixtures. In particular, (A/B) ratio was found to be more effective than other mixtures for 2–4 mm aggregate size mixtures.