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Free Online Educational Presentation

Concrete Pavements Sustainability

Multiple recent initiatives advocate for reducing embodied carbon, i.e., greenhouse gas emissions, associated with concrete production. Even though readily implementable strategies exist, practitioners are concerned that embodied carbon reductions may adversely affect concrete performance and durability, resulting in detrimental effects from a life cycle perspective. To address such concerns, this study investigates the correlations between embodied carbon of concrete mixtures, mixture design parameters, and experimentally measured mechanical and durability properties. The analyzed dataset included 145 mixtures, featuring a variety of mixture designs from laboratory and field studies. The results indicate that the cement content is the most significant predictor of GWP and that considerable savings can be achieved with cement reduction and replacement without compromising performance. Clear correlations of GWP with compressive strength were not identified, while the results demonstrated that reduced GWP and increased surface electrical resistivity (the utilized durability indicator) often occur in synergy. The study also provides the tie between Performance Engineered Mixtures and embodied carbon and thereby provides practical insights into mixture design optimization that includes both sustainability and durability.

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