Strength, fracture and fatigue of pervious concrete

Pervious concrete is increasingly used in the pavements and overlays subjected to heavy traffic and in cold weather regions. In the present study, strength, fracture toughness and fatigue life of two types of pervious concrete, supplementary cementitious material (SCM)-modified pervious concrete (SPC) and polymer-modified pervious concrete (PPC), are investigated. The results indicate that high strength pervious concrete (32–46 MPa at 28 days depending upon the porosity) can be achieved through both SCM-modification, using silica fume (SF) and superplasticizer (SP), and polymer-modification, using polymer SJ-601. For both SPC and PPC, porosity significantly affects compressive strength, but it has little effect on the rate of strength development. Flexural strength of pervious concrete is more sensitive to porosity than compressive strength. Pervious concrete has more significant size effect than conventional concrete. PPC demonstrates much higher fracture toughness and far longer fatigue life than SPC at any stress level.

► The strengths of pervious concrete are much higher than what has been reported elsewhere.
► The paper is aimed at filling research gap on fracture and fatigue behavior of pervious concrete.
► Significant effect of specimen size on compressive strength of pervious concrete is found.