Permeable pavement clogging laboratory experiments using rainfall simulators

Sustainable urban Drainage Systems (SuDS) are becoming a common solution to address the increase in flow discharges, runoff volumes and pollutants concentrations caused by urban expansion. Among them, the use of permeable pavements is nowadays widespread due to their demonstrated effectiveness in managing and treating stormwater. However, there is great uncertainty in how the clogging of permeable pavements affects their long-term performance in terms of permeability reduction and pollution removal efficiency. Therefore, this study focused first in assessing the influence of clogging on the rainfall drained through porous asphalt slabs of 0.4 m x 0.4 m x 0.15 m. The hydrology behavior and removal efficiency of the asphalt were analyzed for different scenarios and grades of clogging by adding surface sediment loads between simulated rain events. In addition, a porous layer of the asphalt analyzed was used for the retrofitting of an impermeable concrete surface of a 36 m2 full-scale street section physical model that uses the same system to simulate rain. The objective is to analyze the impact of the porous asphalt layer on the hydrology and the mobilization of pollutants under full-scale and laboratory-controlled conditions, and to compare with previous tests developed using a conventional impervious concrete pavement.