Hydraulic characterization of a pervious concrete for urban drains

ARRIONDO, R. N. ; URTEAGA, R. ; BATTAGLIA, L.; KLER, P. A.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; III Brazil-Argentine Microfluidics Congress VI Congreso de Microfluídica Argentina; 2022

Microfluídica Argentina

The use of porous concrete for components of urban drainage systems is well known and has great potential for the development of sustainable water management in cities with high levels of water risk. The application of pervious concrete involves different constructive elements and structures, such as retarders, floor grids, and permeable pavements, among others. Despite that such elements have decades of use, there is still a lack of information about the hydraulic parameters that are necessary for the study of those phenomena that define the performance of the permeable elements. Those phenomena are mainly pressure (gravity)–driven flow and capillary suction, that usually require for their modelling the porosity, the Darcy permeability, and the Washburn constant. The different sizes of capillary pores, their stochastic distribution, and the intricate interconnection topology confer a high difficulty when trying a reliable characterization. Consequently, in this work, permeability and capillary suction tests were performed for a particular porous concrete cylindrical specimen with a diameter of 9.8 cm and 10 cm high, and the results were contrasted with parameters from drainage experiments available in the literature. Furthermore, a computed tomography was performed on the specimen, and observations will be contrasted with the measured parameters.