Uncertainty analysis of life cycle assessment of asphalt surfacings

Abstract

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of asphalt pavements are associated with significant uncertainty resulting from variability in the quantity and impact of individual components, the quality of data for each component, and variability of asphalt durability. This study presents a framework to quantify and incorporate the uncertainty of LCA and asphalt durability data into LCA of asphalt surfacings. The suggested framework includes: estimating the uncertainty of asphalt production processes by the pedigree matrix method, conducting a deterministic LCA, applying Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) to estimate the probability density functions (PDFs) of the considered impacts using the uncertainty data, deterministic solution, and asphalt durability. This framework was applied to six asphalt mixtures; the results show that there is significant uncertainty in the processes that contribute to the environmental impacts. They also showed that considering asphalt durability and its uncertainty is critical and can significantly change the results and interpretation of LCA.