Laboratory study of cleaning effects of clogged porous asphalt mixtures

Currently, there does not exist any established test method to evaluate the long-term performance of a porous asphalt pavement against clogging, with or without maintenance cleaning. This study proposes a laboratory test method to bridge this gap. The test method consisted of three main procedures: (i) A procedure to introduce clogging materials into a test specimen, (ii) a procedure to measure the permeability coefficient of the specimen, and (iii) a de-clogging cleaning procedure simulating high-pressure washing. Three porous asphalt mixtures were studied. The test results showed that mixtures with a higher initial porosity required less maintenance effort in terms of the frequency of cleaning, achieved higher cleaning effectiveness in terms of the overall pavement service performance, and had longer service life. A higher cleaning frequency having cleaning activated sooner would produce better overall pavement permeability performance over the entire pavement service life.