State of the art on the mechanical properties of pervious concrete

Abstract

Pervious concrete can be described as porous concrete that allows water to penetrate through the interconnected network of pores. Over the past century, the construction industry has shown increasing interest in pervious concrete, which is an environmentally friendly material. This paper sets out to present the composition and method for formulating pervious concrete; identify the different factors influencing porosity; and establish a relation between the porosity and density of pervious concrete based on cement and natural aggregates resulting from various works of research. In addition, a relation is established between the compressive strength of conventional pervious concrete and its porosity. The equation of the resulting curve shows that such strength is influenced by other parameters that have not been widely studied in the literature. Thus, this study focuses on the relation between compressive strength and other parameters such as type, size and shape of aggregates, cement paste content, water/cement ratios and aggregate/cement ratio. The study also presents the different equations for predicting tensile strength on the basis of the compressive strength of pervious concrete. The results show that the equation for conventional concrete is not suitable for accurately predicting the tensile strength of pervious concrete. In addition, an equation is established to correlate the flexural and compressive strength of pervious concrete, since the existing literature provides no models that correlate these two properties. The findings show that the equation for the flexural strength of conventional concrete is suitable for predicting that of pervious concrete.

HIGHLIGHTS

• This paper presents the composition and method for making up pervious concrete based on cement and natural aggregates.

• It lists the factors affecting the porosity of pervious concrete.

• A relation is established between density and porosity and between compressive strength and porosity.

• The factors that influence the compressive strength of pervious concrete are studied.

• The equation for predicting the tensile strength of conventional concrete is not suitable for pervious concrete.

• The equation for predicting the flexural strength of conventional concrete is suitable for pervious concrete.

Keywords:

• Pervious concrete
• total and effective porosity
• compressive strength
• tensile strength
• flexural strength

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.