Experimental characterization and two-dimensional hydraulic-hydrologic modelling of the infiltration process through permeable pavements

Abstract

Permeable pavements are a common solution for wearing course layers in roads and urban areas. They are composed by highly porous materials with permeability several orders of magnitude above of the natural terrain. This work presents, on one hand, the experimental characterisation of the hydraulic behaviour of a permeable asphalt concrete wearing course layer and, on the other hand, the development and validation of a two-dimensional coupled hydraulic-hydrological distributed numerical model to reproduce the effect of the infiltration in the rainfall-runoff transformation and in the overland flow propagation processes. Experiments show linear and potential trends for permeability-hydraulic head relations when considering constant and variable hydraulic heads, respectively, reaching permeability up to 0.04 m/s for 1 m of hydraulic head. Experiments are reproduced numerically by incorporating new infiltration formulas, which consider the infiltration rate as a function of the hydraulic head, and a specific numerical scheme for properly dealing the mass conservation when negative values of the water depth may occur numerically due to high infiltration rates. This two-dimensional coupled hydraulic-hydrological distributed numerical model is a validated tool for simulating the effect of permeable pavements not only in the rainfall-runoff process, but also for the overland flow propagation.