Pervious Portland cement concrete has gained recent momentum in industry and local governments for being an environmentally preferred alternative to conventional impermeable pavement materials. Pervious concrete is best known for its benefits for storm water management in parking lots and low volume roads. It is also hypothesized to aid in mitigating the Urban Heat Island effect although no research has documented such a benefit in hot arid-climates. In this study, a pervious concrete parking lot constructed in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area is evaluated. The facility was instrumented with temperature and soil moisture sensors, and was monitored for several months. The in situ data was used to calibrate a pavement thermal model and run several different design scenarios. The findings suggested that pervious concrete pavements can provide night time minimum surface temperatures that are lower than conventional impermeable pavements. The moisture results and regional soil analyses also indicated that these permeable materials provide an effective alternative means to capture and retain storm water runoff from parking lots and are applicable for the majority of soil types found in Arizona.

Mohamed Arab (Arizona State University), Claudia Zapata (Arizona State University)