Compressive behavior of pervious concretes and a quantification of the influence of random pore structure features

Properties of a random porous material such as pervious concrete are strongly dependent on its pore structure features, porosity being an important one among them. This study deals with developing an understanding of the material structure–compressive response relationships in pervious concretes. Several pervious concrete mixtures with different pore structure features are proportioned and subjected to static compression tests. The pore structure features such as pore area fractions, pore sizes, mean free spacing of the pores, specific surface area, and the three-dimensional pore distribution density are extracted using image analysis methods. The compressive stress–strain response of pervious concretes, a model to predict the stress–strain response, and its relationship to several of the pore structure features are outlined. Larger aggregate sizes and increase in paste volume fractions are observed to result in increased compressive strengths. The compressive response is found to be influenced by the pore sizes, their distributions and spacing. A statistical model is used to relate the compressive strength to the relevant pore structure features, which is then used as a base model in a Monte-Carlo simulation to evaluate the sensitivity of the predicted compressive strength to the model terms.

Research highlights▶ Identified the relevant pore structure features of pervious concretes, provided methodologies to extract those, and quantified the influence of these features on compressive response. ▶ A model for stress–strain relationship of pervious concretes, and relationship between model parameters and parameters of the stress–strain relationship developed. ▶ Statistical model for compressive strength as a function of pore structure features; and a stochastic model for the sensitivity of pore structure features in strength prediction.