BE: MUSES: Sustainable Concrete Infrastructure Materials and Systems: Developing an Integrated Life Cycle Design Framework

环境中的生物复杂性-材料使用：科学、工程和社会(MUS)项目汇集了来自三个国家和七个学科的研究人员，创建模型并评估新材料，旨在减少大型民用基础设施中使用的混凝土对环境的影响。全球混凝土的生产推动了自然和人类系统之间的巨大材料流动。这种每年超过120亿吨的物质流动的剪切量造成了重大的社会影响。例如，混凝土基础设施项目需要公共资本的重大投资，引发水泥生产的巨大温室气体排放，并导致与建筑相关的交通拥堵，导致污染和生产力损失。开发新材料来补充或取代混凝土以改善性能特性，通常不会解决广泛的经济、环境和社会后果。该项目将通过开发一种新的可持续设计框架来解决这一缺点，该框架将微观结构定制与生命周期分析相结合。该项目从技术设计的角度以及从健康、经济和政策的角度探索工程水泥复合材料(ECC)。该项目包括发展环保混凝土的微观研究，环保混凝土在桥面、道路和管道中的宏观应用，回收材料的使用，生命周期影响的测量，以及不同地理范围的调查。这项工作涵盖了多个学科的视角，包括土木和材料工程、地质学、环境健康科学、工业生态学、环境经济学和公共政策。需要探讨的问题包括采购替代方案的影响(超级采石场与较小的矿山)和基础设施项目的地点(城市与农村，以及美国与中国)。考虑到固有的设计复杂性，研究人员将在他们的定量模型中纳入不确定性和敏感性分析，以确保结果足够稳健，以支持在采用新材料时的有效决策。密歇根大学的团队将与日本东北大学的研究人员合作，他们将调查二氧化碳硬化过程在ECC混合料上的使用；清华大学中国的研究人员将使用生命周期模型评估中国和斯坦福大学基础设施系统的可持续性能。将通过基于网络的教育资源简编以及由全球合作伙伴参加的一系列讲习班来促进教育宣传。预计这项研究将对大型民用基础设施中的材料使用产生重大影响，并将提供工具，加速采用新材料和材料替代品，以降低其整个生命周期对环境的影响。

This Biocomplexity in the Environment - Materials Use: Science, Engineering and Society (MUSES) project brings together researchers from three countries and seven disciplines to create models and evaluate new materials aimed at reducing the environmental impact of concrete used in large civil infrastructures. Global production of concrete drives huge flows of material between natural and human systems. The shear magnitude of this material flow, which exceeds 12 billion tons each year, causes significant societal impacts. For example, concrete-based infrastructure projects require major investments of public capital, trigger enormous greenhouse gas emissions from cement production, and lead to construction-related traffic congestion resulting in pollution and lost productivity. Developments of new materials to supplement or replace concrete to improve the performance characteristics typically do not address the broad economic, environmental, and social consequences. This project will address this shortcoming by developing a novel framework for sustainable design that integrates microstructure tailoring with life cycle analysis. The project explores engineered cementitious composites (ECC) both from a technical design standpoint and from the health, economics, and policy perspectives. The project includes micro-scale research on the development of ECC, macro-scale application of ECC to bridge decks, roadways, and pipes, incorporation of recycled materials, measurement of life-cycle impacts, and investigation at different geographic scopes. This work encompasses multi-disciplinary perspectives including civil and materials engineering, geology, environmental health sciences, industrial ecology, environmental economics, and public policy. Among the issues to be explored are the impacts of sourcing alternatives (superquarries vs. smaller mines) and location of infrastructure projects (urban vs. rural, and U.S. vs. China). Given the inherent design complexity, researchers will incorporate uncertainty and sensitivity analysis in their quantitative models to ensure that results are sufficiently robust to support effective decision-making in the adoption of new materials. The University of Michigan team will collaborate with researchers at the Tohoku University in Japan, who will investigate the use of CO2 hardening process on the ECC mixes; researchers at Tsinghua University in China who will use the life cycle model to assess sustainability performance of infrastructure systems in China, and Stanford University. Educational outreach will be facilitated through a web-based educational resource compendium, as well as through a series of workshops involving the global partners. It is expected that this MUSES research will have a significant impact on materials use in large, civil infrastructures and will provide tools that will accelerate the adoption of new materials and material substitutions that lower the environmental impact over their whole life cycle.