July 20, 2015

Version 2.1 of ‘Pavement LCA’, formerly known as the Impact Estimator for Highways, boasts a variety of new features including US locations and sample projects

The Athena Sustainable Materials Institute has released Version 2.1 of its Pavement LCA tool, formerly known as the Impact Estimator for Highways.

While initially envisioned as an assessment tool for major freeways and arterial roadways, the tool has proven to be capable of assessing the environmental footprint of any roadway cross-section along its length and over its service life – hence the name change to ‘Pavement LCA’.

Version 2.1, available here, includes the following new features:

• Pavement LCA now supports three US regional locations – California, Illinois, and a US average location – and contains multiple US-centric sample roadway projects.
• A variety of new concrete mix designs have been added, and users can add their own custom mixes with the help of a new tutorial.
• Estimating steel reinforcement input mass requirements is easier now, thanks to a new spreadsheet resource file.
• Users can now set the rigid pavement slab length, between 3 and 100 feet.
• Download and installation are faster in the new release.

This new version of Pavement LCA also contains a number of new and updated LCI databases – for Portland cement and North American slag cement, for example – and several new LCI process, including the ready mixed concrete plant process.

More detail on enhancements and updates is available here. The Pavement LCA tutorial can be viewed here.

This release was made possible by the support of the Cement Association of Canada, as well as the National Ready Mixed concrete Association, the Portland Cement Association, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Concrete Sustainability Hub, the Slag Cement Association and Athena Institute members.

Find out how it works and read the user guide here.