HYDROLOGICAL PERFORMANCE OF A PERMEABLE PAVEMENT IN MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE

Permeable pavement represent one of the most important Low Impact Development (LID) techniques. It is usually used to reduce runoff volume, peak-flow and pollutant load. Although the lack of adequate modeling tools is a limiting factor in the diffusion of permeable pavements. The modeling of infiltration phenomena in porous medium is extremely complex due to his strongly unsaturated character. For this reason in this research a modeling application on an innovative permeable pavement in University of Calabria is presented. The HYDRUS-1D software has been used to simulate the infiltration phenomena involved for his capacity to correctly describe the hydrological behavior of porous medium under different boundary conditions. In particular a dual-porosity model with a mass transfer equation has been applied. Several events have been used to assess the predictive performance of the HYDRUS model. The modeling results have been compared with the experimental data in terms of outflow using several statistical index. Results confirm the suitability of the HYDRUS model in predicting the hydrological behavior of permeable pavement.