University of Twente Student Theses
Life-Cycle Assessment of Life-Extending Pavement Maintenance Measures
Jumaliev, A. (2024) Life-Cycle Assessment of Life-Extending Pavement Maintenance Measures.
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| Abstract: | The mission of environmental sustainability has emerged as an essential priority in the construction and infrastructure sector. Pavement maintenance and rehabilitation, essential components of infrastructure management, have been under scrutiny due to their significant cumulative environmental footprint. In response, the pavement sector is looking at eco-friendly management strategies. However, well-informed decision-making processes within engineering firms and pavement management systems are hindered by an overall absence of thorough awareness about the environmental effects of various pavement maintenance systems. The main goal of this study is to present the environmental impacts of specific maintenance treatments within the context of pavement management in the Netherlands. Moreover, this research aims to provide valuable insights to enhance the decision-making process concerning the selection of optimal treatments, tailored to specific environmental contexts and other pavement characteristics. Four maintenance treatments are considered in this study, namely the Emulsieasfaltbeton (EAB), Zeer Open Emulsieasfaltbeton (ZOEAB), Single surface treatment and Crack filling. Following the LCA stages, the considered phases are the raw material extraction, transportation to construction site and the construction and application. This study focuses solely on maintenance treatments as one of the objectives of the study is to show the potential environmental impacts of maintenance treatments before rehabilitation takes place. Three FUs are defined to enable a fair comparison. The environmental impacts are calculated according to the CML method. The “openLCA” software and “ecoinvent 3.3” databases are the main tools to estimate the environmental impacts. In the final stage of discussion of results the sensitivity analysis is done to show the sensitivity of environmental impacts to certain materials. The results of the study show that the EAB maintenance treatment has the highest environmental impact on all 11 impact categories of CML in comparison to the other 3 maintenance techniques. In turn, the crack filling has the lowest contribution to the environmental impacts out of 4 techniques. The most contributing stage to the total environmental impacts of ZOEAB, EAB and single surface treatment is found to be the raw materials extraction phase. For the crack filling, however, the most contributing phase is found to be the construction phase. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Programme: | Civil Engineering BSc (56952) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/98574 |
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