An Overview of the Pavement LCA’s Input Module

From an input perspective, the user enters key roadway descriptors and selects from an array of material layers to model a highway design. The Pavement LCA user also selects one jurisdiction from a list of Canadian (British Columbia,  Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario – Central, Ontario – East, Quebec – Central, Quebec – East, Atlantic) jurisdictions that best describes the roadway’s actual location.

To circumvent the problem of estimating the actual bill of materials for a specific highway design, we developed a set of predetermined juridictional highway designs that can be selected by the application user. The designs, in turn, have material or product quantities associated with them and those quantities are linked to the life cycle inventory databases in the software. Pavement LCA users are therefore able to select commonly used road designs, without having to go through the process of converting to masses, volumes or areas of component materials.

The roadway elements included in this version of the application are recognizable units of a highway design, clearly defined in terms of size and composition, which designers can readily visualize and manipulate when developing a roadway design:

• Pavement layers for traffic lanes and shoulders;
• Aggregate layers for traffic lanes, shoulders, roundings and ditches;
• Extra basic materials

Clicking on the help file for each input dialog box reveals a detailed description including assumptions underlying their definition and some limitations to their use.

There is also a provision for users to add additional basic materials to a roadway design. In fact, if a design has been previously broken down into a basic bill of materials, then it can be entered by simply entering basic materials without reference to the predetermined road designs.