Use of Porous Concrete in Parking Areas for Improving Urban Drainage (PAP014726)

Código

PAP014726

Autores

Paulo Cezar Dias de Alencar, Oscar de Moraes Cordeiro Netto, Carlos Alexandre Bastos de Vasconcellos

Tema

Urban Floods

Resumo

As urban development causes changes on the quality and the quantity of the runoff due to rain events, cities used to adopt technical measures in order to compensate for the human action in urbanized areas, trying to restore or improve the original conditions of drainage or, at least, mitigate the negative impacts. Adoption of porous concrete in parking areas is an example of such measures. This paper aims to present an assessment of performance of porous concrete pavement in reducing runoff generation when applied in parking places. The experiments were carried out at the Brazilian Army?s Headquarters, in Brasilia, Brazil. The relationship between the performance of the drainage and the state of the pavement was evaluated in three different situations (new, clogged and recovered concrete). For this, a paved area of 37.5 m² allocated to three parking spaces for light vehicles. Each of the place was built with 15 cm thick of concrete over a drainage bed of 30 cm thick, adopting differences in the paving construction technique. The evaluation of the hydraulic performance of the pavement occurred through results obtained from runoff generated by artificially simulated rain. The rainfall simulations were performed first with the new pavement. In such experiment, the porous concrete absorption ability was higher than 2.35 mm/min, since the volume of the rain, generated adopting this intensity, was fully conducted into the draining bed. Subsequently, new measurements found a decrease of the permeability when the pavement was clogged. After a surface cleaning, adopting the same simulated rain of 2.35 mm/min, the maximum infiltration rate observed reached 1.75 mm/min. One can conclude that the recovery of the permeability was not completely successful. Therefore, the solution studied by using the porous concrete can play an important role in attenuation of peak flow of rainwater in urban areas, although its efficiency is conditional to maintain the drainage capacity of the floor.