There is an impressive video going viral lately. A concrete mixing machine, is dropping 4.000 liters of water on a parking lot and the concrete just magically absorbs it all.
It’s not a magic trick or CGI. It is a new type of super-absorbent concrete designed to soak up nearly 900 gallons of water in only one minute.
This pavement consists of large pebbles on its uppermost surface, making it easier for the water to seep through its other layers, reaching its rubble base underneath.
This new concrete, could potentially be a very useful tool in combating urban flash flooding from sudden, heavy storms—the type that are likely to become increasingly common lately.

Although it is not perfect. It cannot handle well heavy loads and intense traffic, which makes it non suitable for roads and highways. It can be very useful for parking lots, bike paths and quiet streets.
For you who worry about damage from freezing water since we are talking for a highly permeable pavement, the production company says that their product has “excellent freeze-thaw resistance.”

With a quick search in fxSolver of the term “Permeability”, apart from an older post about Darcy’s law and the Malpasset dam, you can find the equation for Permeability through a porous material.
Permeability is a measure of the ability of a porous material a rock or unconsolidated material, to allow fluids to pass through it.
Permeability is the property of rocks that is an indication of the ability for fluids (gas or liquid) to flow through rocks.
High permeability will allow fluids to move rapidly through rocks, and it is affected by the pressure in a rock.
Permeability also, is part of the proportionality constant in Darcy’s law which relates discharge (flow rate) and fluid physical properties (e.g. viscosity), to a pressure gradient applied to the porous media.
It is given by the formula on the left, where Q is permeability in (m²), ν is the superficial fluid flow velocity through the medium (m/s), μ the Viscosity (Pa*s), Dx the thickness of the bed of the porous medium (m), and DP the applied pressure difference (Pa).

Go ahead, check this equation and search whatever else you want to solve. You will find some help in our fxSolver video.
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