Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

12-2013

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair

Rockaway, Thomas

Author's Keywords

Green infrastructure; Permeable pavement; Low impact development; Maintenance; Stormwater; Best management practices

Subject

Stormwater infiltration; Urban runoff--Management

Abstract

This dissertation is an experimental study based on the findings of two Green Infrastructure (GI) stormwater control measures (SCMs) in Louisville, KY, which focused on the effects of the physical environment on the performance of GI. The GI installed in Louisville are suffering from extensive and rapid surface clogging and in order to optimize current and future GI, an understanding of the factors affecting the performance of the system is required. The study used the current literature to determine the surrounding factors and those of the permeable surface that had not been investigated enough, and used several configurations of GI to determine the effects of these variables on the surface clogging. The module used to test these variables was a wooden flume, specifically designed and constructed from plywood so that the variables of the experiment could be incorporated in testing. The flume simulates a permeable pavement system with storage gallery and a bedding layer, and is paved with three different interlocking concrete pavements that provide gaps of three different sizes. The flume’s longitudinal slope can be adjusted, and the permeable joint material can be included. The performance of the flume was measured using 7 time domain reflectometer (TDRs) instruments, manufactured by Campbell Scientific, which are located inside the storage gallery. After conducting 21 experiments with various configurations, the data was analyzed to reveal meaningful information. As expected, the experiments with permeable joint material show a clear separation for the sediment deposited on the surface, where empty gaps resulted in inorganics being deposited on the up gradient and organics on the down gradient. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of the progression of clogging and progression of infiltration edge on the permeable surface showed that the increase of gap size from 6 mm to 9 mm did not result in a significant change, but the change to 12 mm gaps resulted in a significantly different rate for the progression of the first rate. The presence of #8 aggregate in the gaps resulted in significant changes in both rates and finally the change of slope from 1% to 3% created a significant change in the rate at which surface clogging progressed.

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