Structural and hydrological design of permeable concrete pavements

Permeable pavements are used to mitigate urban flooding. However, conventional concrete permeable pavements have low compressive strength and are prone to clogging, which degrades performance and reduces service life. A new type of permeable pavement, high-strength clogging resistant permeable pavement (CRP), has recently been developed that overcomes many limitations of conventional permeable pavements. This paper presents a new design methodology for CRP that takes into account both structural and hydrological considerations. This is used in 12 case studies which compare CRP with conventional permeable pavements. The results highlight several advantages of CRP and demonstrate that CRP with low porosity (∼5%) can cope with severe rainfall run-off volumes. The suitability of using CRP in both light and heavy load bearing applications is demonstrated. The research also shows that the use of CRP allows considerable reductions in pavement depth compared to conventional permeable pavements with reduced material costs.