Draft page 1 4/27/2006 3:48 PM An Overview of Pervious Concrete Applications in Stormwater Management and Pavement Systems

Recent interest in the use of Portland Cement Pervious Concrete (PCPC) for pavements has been very high, due primarily to the Federal Clean Water Act mandate that government agencies and private entities manage stormwater runoff—both quantity and quality. Such pavements are full depth and are currently being placed primarily in parking lot applications and areas of limited truck traffic. Pervious pavements provide a path for water movement from pavement surfaces and provide increased skid resistance. In addition, PCPC has great potential to reduce roadway noise, either in full-depth applications or as a wearing course. A PCPC mix design must meet the competing criteria of sufficient permeability to allow water to flow through the section while maintaining adequate strength and durability under site-specific loading and environmental conditions. To date, two key issues that have impeded the use of PCPC in the United States are that compressive strengths of PCPC have been lower than necessary for required applications and the freeze-thaw durability of PCPC has been suspect. In this paper a summary of recent research efforts on PCPC mix designs for cold weather applications, reduction of road noise, stormwater management and constructability issues is discussed. In addition, the efforts to develop a comprehensive and integrated study for full depth and wearing course applications under the auspices of the National Concret