Sustainability Assessment of Jointed Plain Concrete Pavements and Fibre-Reinforced Concrete Pavements

Ensuring sustainability of construction and maintenance is critical to the widespread application of fibre-reinforced concrete (FRC) for pavements, which offer higher performance and increased service life. However, investigations in terms of economic and environmental impact assessments are essential for assessing the extent of benefits from this technology. It is important since a large volume of concrete is being consumed for pavement construction worldwide and leads to significant environmental issues, including carbon emissions, resource extraction, energy consumption, air pollution, etc. Consequent to this understanding, this research focuses on the comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental impacts of the two rigid pavement options viz., jointed plain concrete pavements (JPCP) and FRC pavements (FRCP). The environmental impacts are mainly compared in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions expressed as CO2 equivalent and endpoint indicators such as effect on human health, ecosystem toxicity, and extent of resource utilization. LCA includes a cradle to grave analysis. The impact assessment is performed using SimaPro software. The functional unit used is 1 km stretch of road designed for the same traffic spectrum and service life of 30 years. The inventory includes primary data of fuel and energy consumption for construction operations collected from actual sites. All other background data is taken from existing literature, databases, and other sources available on the web. Based on LCA, FRCP exhibits better environmental performance than JPCP. The impact is heavily skewed towards cement utilisation and a material optimisation based on binders will improve the sustainability value of such systems. The study supports green design policies for a more sustainable transportation network.