Effect of Compaction Type and Compaction Efforts on Structural and Functional Properties of Pervious Concrete

Pervious concrete is regarded as an environmentally sustainable pavement material for its storm water management and urban heat island mitigation abilities. PC has an open graded structure with interconnected voids. The interconnected pore structure helps in reducing the storm water runoff issues, water logging, and hydroplaning in urban roads. The single sized aggregates mainly used in pervious concrete are prone to abrasion loss and lower structural capacity due to increased porosity. To increase the structural capacity and reduce abrasion losses, there is a need to study pervious concrete with modified gradations. The objective of this study was to investigate pervious concrete cylinders prepared using combinations of coarse aggregates (> 4.75 mm) compacted using four different compaction types and efforts. The compaction characteristics of eight different PC mixtures were studied to identify threshold values of compaction energies, which provided porosity within acceptable limits of pervious concrete. Further, the structural capacity and abrasion losses of PC mixtures were studied for two differently graded mixtures, which provided structural and functional performance characteristics of those PC mixtures. The structural capacity of PC mixtures was determined through compressive strength test that was highly dependent on aggregate size, water-to-cement ratio, aggregate gradation, and compaction effort. The functional properties of PC mixtures were determined using abrasion resistance, mainly influenced by compaction energy and aggregate-to-cement ratio. Low compaction energy and high aggregate-to-cement ratio led to lower abrasion resistance.