Dr. Andrea Welker’s Articles Selected for Industry Journal

Dr. Andrea L. Welker, PE, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has co-authored two articles slated to appear in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Quantifying Evaporation from Pervious Concrete Systems: Methodology and Hydrologic Perspectives,” and “Examination of the Material Found in the Pore Spaces of Two Permeable Pavements,” both reflect research Dr. Welker has been conducting on Villanova University’s campus for the past five years.

In 2007, Dr. Welker retrofitted an existing parking lot behind Mendel Hall with a section of permeable pavement and an underlying stone infiltration bed. This site has allowed Dr. Welker to study a variety of issues related to stormwater management, including the significance of evaporation behavior on pervious concrete, which is the subject of her first article. In her second article, Dr. Welker examines the materials which clog pore spaces, the leading cause of failure of permeable pavements. “I am grateful that the University allowed me to construct this research site on campus. The data collected has been the subject of three journal articles, and there is still much to learn from its ongoing operation and maintenance,” says Dr. Welker.

Co-authoring the evaporation research article were former Villanova graduate students Evgeny Nemirovsky MSCE ’11, and Ryan Lee MSME ’07, MSWRE ‘11. Nemirovsky also contributed to Welker’s article on material found in pore spaces, along with co-authors Dr. Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins, a science teacher at Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Dr. Leslie Myers McCarthy, Assistant Professor in the College’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department.