Evaluation of the Environmental Impact of Road Pavements From a Life Cycle Perspective

Abstract

The road infrastructure has a major environmental impact by covering important land surfaces and consuming enormous amounts of raw materials for construction and maintenance. The impact of transport pavements needs to be considered from the design stage and to be examined during the whole life cycle of the infrastructure: raw materials extraction and initial transformation, manufacturing, placement on site, exploitation, maintenance, and demolition. This paper evaluates the impact of asphalt and concrete pavements. Two specific case studies, both involving alternatives available for the construction of pavements, namely the conventional flexible pavement designed according to national standard versus the modern steel fibre-reinforced roller-compacted concrete (SFR-RCC) pavement have been undertaken. These alternatives have been analysed, using the GaBi software, to assess their environmental aspects relating to the sustainability concept. After a detailed discussion of the main results obtained in these studies, conclusions and recommendations for an efficient selection of the construction alternatives are formulated.

Determining the Environmental Potentials of Urban Pavements by Applying the Cradle-to-Cradle LCA Approach for a Road Network of a Midscale German City

“…Particularities such as the pavement conditions and the deterioration over time directly influences the rolling resistance of the pavement, affecting the safety, noise level, CO 2 emissions, and fuel consumption of vehicles [5][6][7][8][9]. Therefore, decisions such as defining the least impactful material to construct urban roads, the pavement design, and the periodicity of interventions have a higher impact on the overall impacts caused by roads [10].…”

“…Studies have shown that LCA tools [15,16,[18][19][20][21] can provide a long-term perspective by comparing different solutions and possibilities for urban pavements [10]. However, finding the best materials and structures and an "optimal" maintenance and rehabilitation strategy that can ensure acceptable road conditions, lower agency-user costs, and reduced environmental-social impacts [22] requires complex data analysis and is strongly influenced by local conditions.…”

Relevant Achievements on the Activities of fib WP 2.4.1 for Modelling of Fibre Reinforced Concrete Structures

“…For ULS, it should be indicated the higher load carrying capacity, more ductile failure modes and larger energy absorption and dissipation capacity and structural integrity under loading conditions representative of extreme events [1,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The fibre reinforcement also provides significant enhancements in the durability [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and life cycle of concrete structures [31][32][33][34]. The main applications of FRC are still concentrated in flooring, tunnelling and in some pre-fabrication [1,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], being too scarce in the development of innovative structural systems where the benefits of the fibre reinforcement mechanisms have recognized potential for obtaining technical and economic advantages regarding conventional systems.…”