Georgescu, D.; Vacareanu, R.; Aldea, A.; Apostu, A.; Arion, C.; Girboveanu, A. Assessment of the Sustainability of Concrete by Ensuring Performance during Structure Service Life. Sustainability2022, 14, 617.
Georgescu, D.; Vacareanu, R.; Aldea, A.; Apostu, A.; Arion, C.; Girboveanu, A. Assessment of the Sustainability of Concrete by Ensuring Performance during Structure Service Life. Sustainability 2022, 14, 617.
Georgescu, D.; Vacareanu, R.; Aldea, A.; Apostu, A.; Arion, C.; Girboveanu, A. Assessment of the Sustainability of Concrete by Ensuring Performance during Structure Service Life. Sustainability2022, 14, 617.
Georgescu, D.; Vacareanu, R.; Aldea, A.; Apostu, A.; Arion, C.; Girboveanu, A. Assessment of the Sustainability of Concrete by Ensuring Performance during Structure Service Life. Sustainability 2022, 14, 617.
Abstract
The article presents an original method to assess the sustainability of concrete. The method uses three parameters, namely: performance, lifetime and environmental impact, to calculate a sustainability index. The originality and the simplicity of the proposed method presented in the article consists in the fact that by applying the relation to determine the sustainability index, the first two factors service life and performance are constant. This approach is possible in the context of the new proposals to specify the durability of structural concrete in EN 1992 and EN 206. That allows classification of concrete according to its performance, through Environmental action Resistance Classes (ERC). For this purpose, specific experimental methods were used in order to determine the performance of concrete exposed to carbonation. The concretes were prepared with two cement types with additions (CEM II / A-S and CEM II / A-M (S-LL)). Based on the carbonation resistance classes (the first constant - the performance) and exposure classes, the thickness of the concrete cover layer was determined to ensure a certain service lifetime (second constant - the service lifetime). Finally, the global warming potential was calculated for each composition, consequently allowing the users of the method, to select the compositions with the lowest impact on the environment.
Keywords
sustainability; concrete; assessment; performance; service life; environment.
Subject
Engineering, Civil Engineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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