Development of Vegetation-Pervious Concrete in Grid Beam System for Soil Slope Protection

One of the most efficient and environmentally friendly methods for preventing a landslide on a slope is to vegetate it. Vegetation-pervious concretes have a promising potential for soil protection. In this study, the vegetation-pervious concrete with low alkalinity was developed and studied. Combined with a grid beam structure system, the stability and strength between the vegetation-pervious concrete and base soil are believed to be enhanced effectively. For improving plant adaptability, the alkalinity of concrete can be decreased innovatively by adding a self-designed admixture into the cement paste. The effects of the admixture content on alkalinity and compressive strength of the hardened pervious concrete were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and compression test, respectively. Meanwhile, the permeability of the vegetation-pervious concrete was studied as well. Through comparing with ordinary pervious concrete, the effect of low alkaline pervious concrete on vegetation growth was investigated in a small-scale field for ten weeks. The test results indicated that the alkalinity of the cement samples decreased with the increase of admixture content, and the vegetation grew successfully on previous concrete. By increasing the admixture content to approximately 3.6%, the compressive strength of pervious concrete was more than 25 MPa.