Evaluation of Sustainability, Durability, and the Effect of Specimen Type in Pervious Concrete Mixtures

Abstract

Pavements are one of the most important components of a city’s infrastructure covering significant portions of urban land while simultaneously generating negative impacts such as the increase of urban temperature, lack of clear surface for rainwater percolation and traffic noise. In order to minimize the negative impact of pavements, several agencies have increased requirements for pavement sustainability, with pervious concrete being proposed as one of the leading materials to achieve this goal. The main characteristic of pervious concrete is its interconnected network of pores around the aggregate, which allows rainwater to percolate directly to the soil, potentially lowering pavement temperatures, improving skid resistance and reducing noise generation due to acoustic absorption. The purpose of this research is to further optimize the performance and enhance sustainability of pervious concrete by using waste materials, particularly Ground Granulated Blast Slag (GGBS), to partially replace cement, and Recycled Concrete Aggregate (RCA) to replace virgin coarse aggregate. The proposed methodology will have two steps, focusing on each of the aforementioned materials. Each concrete mixture will be tested for compressive strength, permeability, unit weight and durability. The successful completion of this project would promote the use of pervious concrete in pavements by developing concrete mixtures with optimized properties, lower cost, reduced CO2 footprint and high recycled material content.