Green roofs may make an important contribution to urban stormwater management. Rainfall-runoff models are required to evaluate green roof responses configuration, with the substrate or growing media providing both retention and detention of rainfall. The objective of the research described here is to quantify the detention effects due to green roof substrates, and to propose a suitable hydrological modelling approach.Laboratory results from experimental detention tests on green roof substrates are presented. It is shown that detention increases with substrate depth and as a result of increasing substrate organic content. Model structures based on reservoir routing are evaluated, and it is found that a one-parameter reservoir routing model coupled with a parameter that describes the delay to start of runoff best fits the observed data. Preliminary findings support the hypothesis that the reservoir routing

SummaryIn this paper, we present a new method to reconstruct large volumes of nontransparent porous materials at submicron resolution. The proposed method combines fluorescence laser scanning confocal microscopy with serial sectioning to produce a series of overlapping confocal z-stacks, which are then aligned and stitched based on phase correlation. The method can be extended in the XY plane to further increase the overall image volume. Resolution of the reconstructed image volume does not degrade with increase in sample size. We have used the method to image cementitious materials, hardened cement paste and concrete and the results obtained show that the method is reliable. Possible applications of the method such as three-dimensional characterization of the pores and microcracks in hardened concrete, three-dimensional particle shape characterization of cementitious materials and threedimensional characterization of other porous materials such as rocks and bioceramics are discussed.

The effect of supplementary cementitious materials on three-dimensional pore structure and how this influences mass transport properties are not well understood. This paper examines the effect of silica fume, fly ash and ground granulated blastfurnace slag on 3D structure of capillary pores (> 0.24 m) within 100 3 m 3 cement paste for the first time using laser scanning confocal microscopy, combined with backscattered electron imaging and mercury intrusion porosimetry. Pastes containing different binder types, w/b ratios and curing ages were tested. Results show that SF enhances 3D pore structure from early ages whereas PFA and GGBS show improvements at later ages. SCMs not only reduce the volume and size of accessible pores, but also decrease connectivity and increase tortuosity, pore coordination number and formation factor. Measured 3D pore parameters were used as modelling inputs to estimate diffusivity and permeability. Predictions to within a factor of five from measured values were obtained.

The representative elementary volume (REV) is a fundamental property of a material, but no direct measurements exist for cementitious materials. In this paper, the REV of cement pastes with supplementary cementitious materials (GGBS, PFA, SF) was determined by analysing the three-dimensional pore structure (> 0.2 μm) using laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM). The effect of axial distortion inherent to LSCM on 3D pore structure was also investigated. A range of 3D pore parameters was measured using skeletonisation, maximal ball and random walker algorithms. Results show that axial distortion has insignificant effects on most parameters except Euler connectivity, average pore and throat volumes and directional diffusion tortuosities. Most pore parameters become independent of sampling volume at ≈ 603 μm3 except diffusion tortuosities and formation factor. The REV for porosity calculated based on a statistical approach at eight realisations and 5% relative error was found to be ≈ 1003 μm3

No abstract