Case Study on Life Cycle Assessment Applied to Road Restoration Methods

Abstract

Brazil’s dependence on road transportation, combined with the high extent of the network and the lack of investment management in maintenance and restoration, makes traffic conditions poor, resulting in unwanted costs and environmental impacts. Life cycle assessments are a promising tool that assists in decision making. This study aimed to evaluate the environmental performance of three roads, applying different restoration and maintenance techniques throughout the analysis cycle. To develop this study, the ecoinvent database and the OpenLCA software were used to model, based on studies developed in the HDM-4 (Highway Development and Management) software, and the interventions were applied for the initial year and for 30 years. Using the life cycle assessment methodology, the environmental impacts generated for the categories of acidification, climate change, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, human toxicity and photochemical oxidation were identified. The results show that, when analyzing the restorations in their implementation, deep recycling generates more environmental impacts; however, when planning the restorations throughout the cycle, deep recycling becomes, on average, 47% less impactful than the structural reinforcement technique, which is the same behavior that has been identified with the Whitetopping technique. It becomes evident that the use of rigid structures, such as Whitetopping or semi-rigid structures and deep recycling with Portland cement additions, generate fewer environmental impacts when compared to flexible structures that consume a large amount of asphalt binder, and that require interventions at shorter intervals.