Porosity and permeability evaluation of pervious concrete using three-dimensional x-ray computed tomography

Abstract

The functional performance of pervious concrete pavement surfaces (such as hydraulic, acoustic and frictional performances) is greatly influenced by the design of the pervious concrete mixture and its internal pore structure. With the advancement in computational imaging technologies, it is now possible to adopt X-ray computed tomography techniques to determine the internal pore structures of pervious concrete pavement surfaces. This paper examines the use of medical three-dimensional X-ray computed tomography (CT) to determine the effective porosity and the permeability in pervious concrete pavement surfaces. X-ray CT scans on different pervious concrete pavement specimens are performed and various tomographic reconstruction algorithms are tested to evaluate the performance in estimating effective porosity and permeability in pervious concrete. Our finding is that such techniques are capable of providing a non-destructive interpretation on pervious concrete mix effective porosity and permeability with potential applications in pervious concrete mix design.