Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment

Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment
Author: Imad L. Al-Qadi
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1351659219

An increasing number of agencies, academic institutes, and governmental and industrial bodies are embracing the principles of sustainability in managing their activities and conducting business. Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment contains contributions to the Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Symposium 2017 (Champaign, IL, USA, 12-13 April 2017) and discusses the current status of as well as future developments for LCA implementation in project- and network-level applications. The papers cover a wide variety of topics: - Recent developments for the regional inventory databases for materials, construction, and maintenance and rehabilitation life-cycle stages and critical challenges - Review of methodological choices and impact on LCA results - Use of LCA in decision making for project selection - Implementation of case studies and lessons learned: agency perspectives - Integration of LCA into pavement management systems (PMS) - Project-level LCA implementation case studies - Network-level LCA applications and critical challenges - Use-phase rolling resistance models and field validation - Uncertainty assessment in all life-cycle stages - Role of PCR and EPDs in the implementation of LCA Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment will be of interest to academics, professionals, and policymakers involved or interested in Highway and Airport Pavements.

Pavement, Roadway, and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment 2020

Pavement, Roadway, and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment 2020
Author: John Harvey
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2020-07-02
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1000201724

An increasing number of agencies, academic institutes, and governmental and industrial bodies are embracing the principles of sustainability in managing their activities. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an approach developed to provide decision support regarding the environmental impact of industrial processes and products. LCA is a field with ongoing research, development and improvement and is being implemented world-wide, particularly in the areas of pavement, roadways and bridges. Pavement, Roadway, and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment 2020 contains the contributions to the International Symposium on Pavement, Roadway, and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment 2020 (Davis, CA, USA, June 3-6, 2020) covering research and practical issues related to pavement, roadway and bridge LCA, including data and tools, asset management, environmental product declarations, procurement, planning, vehicle interaction, and impact of materials, structure, and construction. Pavement, Roadway, and Bridge Life Cycle Assessment 2020 will be of interest to researchers, professionals, and policymakers in academia, industry, and government who are interested in the sustainability of pavements, roadways and bridges.

Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures

Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures
Author: Fernando Pacheco-Torgal
Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
Total Pages: 777
Release: 2017-11-15
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0081021828

Eco-efficient Repair and Rehabilitation of Concrete Infrastructures provides an updated state-of-the-art review on eco-efficient repair and rehabilitation of concrete infrastructure. The first section focuses on deterioration assessment methods, and includes chapters on stress wave assessment, ground-penetrating radar, monitoring of corrosion, SHM using acoustic emission and optical fiber sensors. Other sections discuss the development and application of several new innovative repair and rehabilitation materials, including geopolymer concrete, sulfoaluminate cement-based concrete, engineered cementitious composites (ECC) based concrete, bacteria-based concrete, concrete with encapsulated polyurethane, and concrete with super absorbent polymer (SAPs), amongst other topics. Final sections focus on crucial design aspects, such as quality control, including lifecycle and cost analysis with several related case studies on repair and rehabilitation. The book will be an essential reference resource for materials scientists, civil and structural engineers, architects, structural designers and contractors working in the construction industry. Delivers the latest research findings with contributions from leading international experts Provides fully updated information on the European standard on materials for concrete repair (EN 1504) Includes an entire sections on the state-of-the-art in NDT, innovative repair and rehabilitation materials, as well as LCC and LCA information

A Methodology for a Pavement Resurfacing Strategy to Minimize Life-cycle Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

A Methodology for a Pavement Resurfacing Strategy to Minimize Life-cycle Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Author: Jeffrey Roger Lidicker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 79
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

In recent decades pavement management optimization has been designed with the objective of minimizing user and agency life-cycle costs. However, pavement management decisions also have significant impacts on life-cycle energy use and environmental emissions from pavement management activity and user vehicles. This study expands beyond optimizing pavement rehabilitation strategy for minimization of life-cycle costs to also include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We extend previous work on the single-facility, continuous-state, continuous-time optimal pavement resurfacing problem to solve the multi-criteria optimization problem with the two objectives of minimizing costs and GHG emissions. The balance between the potentially two different optimal rehabilitation policies is found through the use of a Pareto frontier, which exists in the span between the cost- and emission- optimal strategies. The Pareto frontier provides decision makers with the dollars per tonne of GHG emissions saved due to a change in rehabilitation strategy. Results using California data indicate that there is a tradeoff between costs and emissions when developing a pavement resurfacing strategy, providing a range of GHG emissions reduction cost-effectiveness options. Case studies for a two-lane arterial and a ten-lane major highway in California are presented, where traditional hot-mix asphalt overlays are applied. The 2011 case studies are particular to California by traffic loadings and pavement durability. However, the user and agency emission and cost estimations are based on national data. Thus, generalizing the case study results should be subject to these caveats. An ordinary medium-volume metropolitan state-designed road and an extremely heavily traveled highway bearing commuters into and from San Francisco are optimized as representative situations. Results for a one-kilometer segment of Interstate 80, in Berkeley California, with ten lanes and 273,000 light-duty vehicles and 13,100 heavy-duty vehicles per day, indicate that the life-cycle cost minimum occurs when asphalt overlays are applied every 15 years or equivalently when the pavement roughness reaches an international roughness index (IRI) of 2.7 m/km. Coincidentally, this is the same roughness Caltrans uses to decide when to apply an overlay for the state's roads. However, where any of the conditions or characteristics for any pavement segments are different, the coincidence may cease to exist. The minimum life-cycle cost at this optimal pavement rehabilitation strategy is approximately $490,000 per kilometer per year, at which point resurfacing activity and user vehicles would emit approximately 220 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year. The GHG emissions minimum corresponds to an overlay interval of 22 years or the equivalent threshold roughness IRI of 3.4 m/km. The minimum GHG emissions (user emissions plus agency emissions) are approximately 200 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year, with life-cycle costs (user costs plus agency costs) at approximately $520,000 per kilometer per year. Agency and user emission (and cost) estimates each change in opposing directions when overlay intervals change. Thus, when each of the like agency and user attributes are added together, a minimum is guaranteed to exist. Any pavement rehabilitation strategy that makes use of overlay intervals outside of this sub-interval defined by the life-cycle cost and GHG emissions optima are trivial in that any strategy change designed to reduce costs also reduces emissions. However, inside this special sub-interval, any change in strategy that reduces costs will increase emissions and vice versa. Thus, this special sub-interval constitutes a Pareto frontier of optimal solutions where tradeoffs are associated with each change. For example, if Caltrans is currently operating at the life-cycle cost minimum by applying an overlay interval every 15 years but decides to reduce emissions by changing the interval to every 18 years, there will be a reduction in emissions. However, it will come at a total life-cycle cost of approximately $500 per tonne of CO2 equivalents. Of course different pavement rehabilitation strategy changes will present different cost-effectiveness ratios. If the change spans points outside the Pareto frontier, the costs may be minimal or even negative. However, within the Pareto frontier, attempts to save even more emissions will increase costs per unit of CO2 equivalents saved. If a market value for CO2 exists, then a unique optimal pavement rehabilitation strategy is defined. On the Pareto frontier is every possible market value as the negative of the slope of the tangent line to each point on the curve represents a market value starting with zero dollars per tonne of emissions (cost minimum) to infinite dollars per tonne of emissions (emissions minimum). Results for a two-lane arterial road segment, also in Berkeley, which has only 25,000 light-duty vehicles and 480 heavy-duty vehicles per day, indicate that similar pavement rehabilitation strategy overlay intervals are optimal. For the life-cycle cost minimum, a 16-year overlay interval is optimal, which corresponds to a threshold roughness IRI of 2.1 m/km. For the GHG emissions minimum, an overlay interval of 25 years and its associated threshold roughness IRI of 2.5 m/km are optimal. Although the overlay intervals are not that different from the larger ten-lane interstate highway case, the threshold roughness values are more favorable in the two-lane case. The life-cycle cost minimum occurs at approximately $80,000 per kilometer per year and is associated with approximately 51 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year. The GHG emissions minimum occurs at approximately 47 tonnes of CO2 equivalents per kilometer per year and is associated with approximately $86,000 per kilometer per year. A sensitivity analysis on model input parameters revealed which parameters required the best accuracy and shed light on policy decisions. Pavement deterioration rate, within a 20% variation, had a relatively little effect on outcomes. This indicates that uncertainty around the pavement deterioration rate is not very important. However, a small change in vehicle miles traveled had a large effect on outcomes. Other results highlighted the contrast between strategy decisions for various pavement and vehicle technologies. For example, it is found that, in both case studies, improving vehicle fleet fuel economy will save total (tailpipe plus pavement) emissions. The two-lane case showed a larger percentage of relative reduction in emissions but the ten-lane case was found to have a larger total reduction in emissions. However, an improved fuel economy for the vehicle fleets means that the effect of roughness on fuel consumption is less. Thus, the GHG emissions associated with pavement management become a larger share of the total emissions. This means that at the emissions optimal, the pavements are allowed to become rougher before being rehabilitated again. Thus, to counteract the expected fuel economy improvements of the future, the use of new technologies that reduce emissions associated with pavement overlay activity, but also reduce roughness at optimality, is paramount. For the same reason, technologies that provide more durable pavements are also encouraged.

Life-cycle Cost Approach for Management of Environmental Resources

Life-cycle Cost Approach for Management of Environmental Resources
Author: V. Ratna Reddy
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 73
Release: 2014-08-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319062875

This book demonstrates the application of Life-cycle Cost Approach (LCCA) in the management of infrastructure and other investment projects in the context of developing countries. The main goal is to identify potential opportunities for the adoption LCCA in developing countries, with the help of case studies and best practices. The editors observe that developing countries are plagued with poor and fluctuating service delivery which affords low or no priority for environmental protection. They seek to instill at the policy-making level an understanding of why life-cycle cost assessment is central to achieving the goals of sustainable development as well as sustainable service delivery and to influence the behavior of sector stakeholders. The editors examine the evolution of LCCA from a project appraisal tool to a more comprehensive method of incorporating sustainable development aspects in a variety of sectors. By providing a compendium of concepts, tools and practical experiences, it seeks to broaden the application of LCCA, which is often limited to specific phases of the life-cycle with little or no weight given to environmental aspects. The aim of the book is to mainstream LCCA into governance processes at institutional levels from local to national, in order to increase the ability and willingness of decision makers - both users and those involved in service planning, budgeting and delivery - to reach better informed and more relevant choices among different types and levels of products and services.

Energy and Emission Impact Quantification of Pavement Preservation Using Life Cycle Assessment

Energy and Emission Impact Quantification of Pavement Preservation Using Life Cycle Assessment
Author: Rashmi Gangaram
Publisher:
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2014
Genre: Greenhouse gases
ISBN:

This study aims at developing a life cycle assessment (LCA) model to quantify the impact of pavement preservation on energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the past, most of the research focused on the environmental impact of pavements at material and construction stages but ignored the usage stage. The construction stage analyzed in this study contains energy consumption and GHG emissions at material, manufacture, transportation and placement phases. Vehicle operating cost and fuel economy is affected by change in tire rolling resistance during usage stage. This also affects GHG emissions significantly. In this study the Highway Development and Management (HDM-4) model and the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) were used to analyze fuel consumption and emissions caused by different vehicles on the pavements treated by different preservation treatments. Surface characteristics such as roughness, texture and deflection were taken into account in tire rolling resistance along with general factors such as speed, traffic volume, and road grade. Two pavement sections with different roughness from the long-term pavement performance (LTPP) database were used in the analysis to illustrate the importance of considering usage stage in LCA. The thin overlay was found to have the highest energy consumption and emissions among four preservation treatments during construction stage, but at the same time resulted in the greatest reduction of energy and emission at usage stage. If only construction stage is considered, energy and emissions are ruled by use of amount of material and manufacture process. The reductions of GHG emission at usage stage are much greater than the GHG emission produced at construction stage for all preservation treatments. Excluding the usage stage will omit the fact that construction stage has less impact on pavement LCA than usage stage. Combining both construction and usage stages gave a life-cycle impact of pavement preservation on energy and GHG emission. The results show that there is a significant amount of change in energy consumption and emissions when traffic factors and pavement surface characteristics are considered during usage stage. The study results provide valuable insights in selecting sustainable pavement maintenance strategies from an environmental view point.

Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases

Solid Waste Management and Greenhouse Gases
Author: Barry Leonard
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2003-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0756733510

In the 21st century, management of municipal solid waste (MSW) continues to be an important environmental challenge facing the U.S. Climate change is also a serious issue, & the U.S. is embarking on a number of voluntary actions to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that can intensify climate change. By presenting material-specific GHG emission factors for various waste management options, this report examines how the two issues -- MSW management & climate change -- are related. The report's findings may be used to support a variety of programs & activities, including voluntary reporting of emission reductions from waste management practices. Charts, tables & graphs.