Evaporation from a Pervious Concrete Stormwater Control Measure: Parameterization, Quantifying, and Evaluation: Fid-Bau Portal

Evaporation from a Pervious Concrete Stormwater Control Measure: Parameterization, Quantifying, and Evaluation

Nemirovsky, Evgeny M. / Welker, Andrea L. / Traver, Robert G.

Use of pervious pavements as stormwater control measures (SCMs) or best management practices (BMPs) is a well-established practice. These pavements, when used in conjunction with infiltration beds, are effective at reducing runoff volume, improving water quality, recharging the ground water table, and mitigating high temperature inflows. Flow reduction mechanisms are based on capture and temporary storage of runoff in the stone bed beneath pervious pavements and subsequent infiltration through subsurface soils. Evaporation is another potential mechanism through which temporarily stored runoff is released; however, it is neglected as a design practice due to limited knowledge and apparent insignificance. The research described in this paper is being conducted to identify parameters affecting evaporation rates from a pervious concrete SCM, measure evaporation in a laboratory setting, and predict typical evaporation rates from pervious concrete SCMs. This paper describes the design of a pervious concrete bench-top scale model and its evaporation behavior in response to simulated environmental conditions. Preliminary results from this experiment indicate that daily evaporation rates vary substantially with change in depth to the ponded water within the SCM. Evaporation behavior in fully saturated conditions resembled that of an open water body. The ponded water had an influence zone beyond which its effect on evaporation behavior was insignificant. The results of this work indicate that evaporation can play a significant role in hydrologic performance of shallow SCMs with poor or inhibited ground infiltration characteristics.