Hartmann+-+Go+Fix+It+-+Article+Annotation+2



Thomas Hartmann May 1, 2014 “Development of a life cycle assessment tool for construction and maintenance of asphalt pavements”

Huang, Y., Bird, R., & Heidrich, O. (2009). Development of a life cycle assessment tool for construction and maintenance of asphalt pavements. //Journal of Cleaner Production//, //17//(2), 283–296. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2008.06.005
 * 1.) Full Citation**

Yue Huang is a lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom. He got his PhD in Civil Engineering at Newcastle University in 2007. Since then, he has been a researcher in civil engineering at Scott Wilson and the University of Nottingham. He has focused his research on highway design, pavement engineering, and life cycle assessment.
 * 2.) Where does the author work, what else has s/he written about, and what are her/his credentials?**

Huang, Y. (n.d.). Yue Huang - United Kingdom | LinkedIn. Retrieved May 1, 2014, from []

The text describes how the pavement construction and maintenance industry can use a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to analyze the environmental impacts of all aspects of pavement construction and maintenance. The article describes the parts of the system that are the most unsustainable and have the greatest environmental impact and the parts that could potentially be improved. For example, the production of hot mix asphalt (HMA) is the most energy intensive part of the process. Further, the aggregates in pavement can be replaced with recycled materials such as reclaimed pavement, steel slag, and glass.
 * 3.) What is the main topic or argument of the text?**

The article describes how the required road maintenance can be minimized by designing roads to have a longer life and to require maintenance of only the top few layers of the road rather than the entire road. This makes maintenance less time and resource intensive, reducing its environmental impact.
 * 4.) Describe at least three ways that the main topic or argument is fleshed out.**

Second, the article argues that the current LCA methods being used are preventing the construction of more sustainable and environmentally friendly roads because they are old and inaccurate. This is a consequence of changes in industry manufacturing techniques, changes in road standards, poor adaptability to changing conditions, commercial restrictions (of the models themselves), and the fact that the models do not fully take into account all environmental impacts and areas where sustainability could be improved such as using recycled materials.

The article provides multiple diagrams that present nearly all of the processes that are involved in the pavement industry. The text goes through each of these how they affect the LCA. For example, the production of hot-mix asphalt consumes a significant amount of energy, which could be reduced if warm-mix asphalt was used. The large amount of transportation required to move the materials from one process to another is also taken into account because it requires fuel and produces pollution.

When referring to the LCA, the article says, “It aims to quantify and collate all the environmental impacts from the life time of the product or process…. The LCA model can be further tested and calibrated as a decision support tool for sustainable construction in the road industry.”
 * 5.) What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?**

The article describes how the environmental impacts of the process of producing pavement are quantified when it says, “The ‘process parameters’ worksheet includes data on transport distance (km), fuel efficiency of transport vehicles (litre/km or litre/km * t) and energy consumption per unit of materials production (MJ/t) and pavement construction (MJ/m2) in a pavement project.”

The article describes what makes a good LCA when it says, “The key elements for a quality LCA study of asphalt pavements are... the communication skills with contractors… the level of details and sophistication of the model, the incorporation of up-to-date and alternative data sources… the presentation of results, featured by graphic illustration and data quality analysis... [and the provision of] both the mandatory and optional elements addressed.”

The article provides many details on the complete life cycle of pavement, which is important in my research for determining as many areas as possible where intervention could increase the sustainability and environmental friendliness of roads.
 * 6.) Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports your research focus.**

I used the text’s diagram of the asphalt pavement life cycle. This is included information on the production of aggregates, bitumen, hot-mix asphalt, emulsion, cold-mix asphalt, paving, recycling, and transportation.
 * 7.) List at least two details or references from the text that you have used in your presentation and wiki post**.

I also used the information from the article that careful attention must be paid to potential ideas such recycling waste materials into aggregate for pavement because they could potentially use more energy and have a large CO2 footprint than using the aggregates that are typically used for pavement.