Development of a pavement life cycle assessment tool for airfield rehabilitation strategies

Kulikowski, John M

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89079 Copy

Description

Title

Development of a pavement life cycle assessment tool for airfield rehabilitation strategies

Author(s)

Kulikowski, John M

Issue Date

2015-12-11

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Roesler, Jeffrey R.

Department of Study

Civil & Environmental Engineering

Discipline

Civil Engineering

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Airports
• LCA-AIR
• Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR)
• Life Cycle Assessment
• Laser Scanning
• Precast Concrete Panels
• Rehabilitation
• Rubblization

Abstract

The demand to provide more sustainable facilities and infrastructure has increased over the past ten years. The ability to measure and quantify the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects like life cycle costs is in higher demand. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies/tools are developed for highway infrastructure and pavements with a limited number of studies developed for airports and even fewer for the airport pavement infrastructure. A pavement LCA tool called LCA-AIR 1.0 is introduced to fill the necessary gap in quantifying sustainability strategies for airfield pavements. LCA-AIR incorporates the material production, construction/maintenance and rehabilitation, and use phases in the analysis. Standard indicators from TRACI are used to quantify these impacts based on two functional units (square yard and pounds-mile traveled). To assess and evaluate the viable rehabilitation strategies, comprehensive and accurate field data must be collected. A summary of LIDAR and laser scanning technology and projects for highway and airport infrastructure is presented. An LCA case study was performed for three candidate rehabilitation strategies on Taxiway A and B at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL: rubblization with mill/asphalt inlay, precast concrete panel replacement, and full depth reconstruction of existing concrete pavement structure. An extensive literature review and investigation into the use of precast concrete pavement on airports in the US and abroad is documented for application to rapid rehabilitation. LCA-AIR showed that each phase contributed at different magnitudes to the environmental impact with the use phase producing the greatest LCA impact factors. The LCA analysis focused on the construction/maintenance and rehabilitation (CMR) phase, as the material production (MP) phase for initial construction and use (U) phase were the same for all cases. The GWP potential for PCP was 2,395 kg CO2/yd2 (4.700x10-10 kg CO2/lb-mile), for rubblization was 2,395 kg CO2/yd2 (4.310x10-10 kg CO2/lb-mile), and for reconstruction was 2,395 kg CO2/yd2 (4.701x10-10 kg CO2/lb-mile). The energy consumed for rubblization was 0.18612 TJ/ yd2 (3.576x10-8 TJ/lb-mile), for PCP was 0.18617 TJ/ yd2 (3.654x10-8 TJ/lb-mile) and for reconstruction was 0.18628 TJ/ yd2 (3.656x10-8 TJ/lb-mile).

Graduation Semester

2015-12

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89079

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2015 John Kulikowski

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