Technical Paper submitted to ACI Materials Journal:

STRENGTH MEASUREMENTS OF FIELD-PLACED PERVIOUS CONCRETE Liv M. Haselbach (ACI Member), Charles E. Pierce (ACI Member), Kevin S. Pulis, Felipe Montes, and Srinivas Valavala
P P

Liv M. Haselbach, ACI Member, is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. She received her PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2000 and has research interests in sustainable construction. She is a member of ACI Committee 522, Pervious Concrete. Charles E. Pierce, Member ACI, is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. He received his PhD from Northwestern University in 1998 and has research interests on the use of by-products in cement-based materials. He is a member and current secretary of ACI Committee 229, Controlled Low-Strength Materials, and is a member of ACI Committee 555, Concrete with Recycled Materials. Kevin S. Pulis is a civil engineer at Freeland & Associates, Inc., a site development and surveying firm in Greenville, SC. He received his BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of South Carolina in December 2004. Felipe Montes is a graduate research assistant in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He received his MS in Biosystems Engineering from Clemson University. Srinivas Valavala is a stormwater engineer with Richland County, South Carolina. He received an MS from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Carolina and a BTech in Civil Engineering from JNTU College of

Engineering, Kakinada, India. ABSTRACT Pervious concrete is an alternative paving surface with potential environmental benefits such as reduced stormwater runoff. There is a need for correlations between its

environmental characteristics such as porosity and load-bearing properties such as strength so that designers can specify the product for multiple purposes. This paper evaluates several mechanical properties of two representative field-placed pervious concrete slabs, one produced with a low-porosity (P<20%) mixture and the other with a high-porosity (P>25%) mixture. Beams were sawcut from each slab and tested for flexural strength. Block specimens were sawcut from each slab and then cored to measure porosity and compressive strength as per ASTM C39 at different ages, with an apparent acceptable level of statistical variation for the strength measurement. There is an apparent correlation between an increase in porosity and a decrease in compressive strength for the specimens. Significant variations of porosity and consequently strength were noted based on location within a slab. It is recommended that multiple representative cores are tested and future studies performed to correlate field placement techniques with spatial variations of mechanical properties. Keywords: pervious concrete; no-fines concrete; porous concrete; runoff; nonpoint source pollution; porosity; compressive strength; flexural strength.