Bin Ali, S., Kamaris, G.S., Gkantou, M. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Comparative Study of Life-Cycle Environmental and Cost Performance of Aluminium Alloy–Concrete Composite Columns. Sustainability, 16 (21). 9252. ISSN 2071-1050
Abstract
As is widely known, the construction industry is one of the sectors with a large contribution to global carbon emissions. Despite numerous efforts in the construction industry to develop low-carbon materials, there is a limited number of studies quantifying and presenting the overall environmental impact when these materials are applied in a construction project as structural members. To address this gap, this study focuses on assessing the life-cycle performance of novel structural aluminium alloy–concrete composite columns. In this paper, the environmental impacts and economic aspects of a concrete-filled aluminium alloy tubular (CFAT) column and a concrete-filled double-skin aluminium alloy tubular (CFDSAT) column were assessed using life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) approaches, respectively. The cradle-to-grave system boundary is considered for these analyses to cover the entire life-cycle. A concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) column is also assessed for reference. All columns are designed to have the same load-carrying capacity and, thus, are compared on a level-playing basis. A comparison is also made of the self-weight of these columns. In particular, the self-weight of the CFST column is reduced by around 17% when the steel tube is replaced by an aluminium alloy tube, and decreased by 47% when the double-skin technique is adopted in CFDSAT columns. The LCA results indicate that the CO2 emission of CFST and CFAT is almost the same, which is 21% less than the CFDSAT columns due to the use of high aluminium in the latter. The LCCA results show that the total life-cycle cost of CFAT and CFDSAT columns is around 29% and 14% lower, respectively, than that of the CFST column. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was carried out to evaluate the effects of data and assumptions on the life-cycle performance of the examined columns.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | aluminium alloy; concrete-filled section; life-cycle assessment; CO2 emission; life-cycle cost; sensitivity analysis |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Transport Studies (Leeds) > ITS: Spatial Modelling and Dynamics (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Nov 2024 12:43 |
Last Modified: | 29 Nov 2024 12:43 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/su16219252 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220250 |