Abstract
Permeable paving can be used in Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems as an alternative to conventional impervious hard surfaces, such as roads, carparks, footpaths and pedestrian areas. The most common concern appears to be that at grades greater than 5%, the volume of stormwater that runs off the pavement may exceed the volume that infiltrates into the pavement. This paper presents the experimental results of two studies undertaken to investigate the infiltration performance of permeable pavements installed on sloping sub-catchments at grades of between 0% and 20%. The first was a laboratory-based pilot study undertaken at the University of Cantabria in Spain. The second study was conducted at the University of South Australia with a full-scale, variable-slope, experimental rig designed to evaluate changes in the infiltration performance of sloping permeable pavements. From the results of these two studies, it is shown that at grades greater than 5%, the volume of stormwater that runs off the pavement does not exceed the volume that infiltrates into the pavement.