Life-cycle assessment of strengthening pre-stressed normal-strength concrete beams with different steel-fibered concrete layers

This study aimed to determine the difference between two alternatives for pre-stressed normal-strength concrete beams according to life-cycle assessments (LCAs): strengthening the PNSC (pre-stressed normal-strength concrete) beam on one side with a 70 mm width, steel-fibered, high-strength concrete layer (Case 1) and strengthening the PNSC beams by jacketing on three sides with 30 mm width, ultra-high-performance, fiber-reinforced concrete layers (Case 2). We conducted LCAs of these cases using the ReCiPe2016 midpoint and endpoint-single-score methods. The differences among the beams’ endpoint-single-score results were evaluated using a two-stage nested analysis of variance. The ReCiPe2016 midpoint results showed that compared to Case 2, Case 1 reduced the global warming potential, terrestrial ecotoxicity, water consumption, and fossil-resource-scarcity impacts by 73–80%. The ReCiPe2016 endpoint-single-score results showed that the environmental damage from Case 1 was significantly lower (p = 0.0003) than that from Case 2. These findings could be promising and useful for studying sustainability in construction.