Date of Award

Spring 2017

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2017.

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Edwin Maurer

Abstract

Porous concrete is a special kind of concrete that has high porosity. The only difference between porous concrete and normal concrete is that a porous concrete mix does not consist of sand or other small particles. The lack of sand and small particles creates voids in the concrete. The voids that area created are the reason why water is able to pass through a porous concrete mix. Porous concrete is used for low traffic areas such as parking lots and pavements. The main purpose of porous concrete is to reduce or even eliminate storm water runoff which has a number of benefits.

For this project, the team developed a porous pavement mixture that will be applicable for practical and real life use. This means that the porous concrete mixture must have a certain permeability and compressive strength.

There were two main parts to the project. Initially the team found what value of water to cement ratio would give the highest possible compression strength. The team started with experimenting with water to cement ratio due to the fact that it is the only variable that affects compressive strength and barely, if at all, affects permeability. After figuring out what the best water to cement ratio was, the next part of the project was about experimenting with other variables that affect the permeability and compression strength of a porous concrete.

After acquiring the best water to cement ratio for the highest compression strength, the second part of the experiment will consist of varying two other variables, which were aggregate size and types of aggregate. By optimizing these variables, an optimal porous concrete mixture was found that could be used for practical use. The hope was to find a mixture that can be used for either pavements or parking lots.

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