Sustainability assessment methodology for concrete manufacturing process: a fuzzy inference system approach

Abstract

Sustainability assessment of concrete manufacturing processes has recently received great attention among scholars and practitioners. While most of the studies on sustainability assessment of concrete manufacturing processes focus on economic and environmental issues, those which consider all three dimensions of sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) simultaneously are rather limited. In this study, a hybrid approach of fuzzy inference system and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed in order to evaluate the sustainability level of concrete manufacturing processes based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principals. AHP is applied to weight the selected sustainability elements and sub elements. Afterward, fuzzy inference system is used to evaluate the sustainability level of concrete manufacturing processes. The practicality and applicability of the proposed approach are examined by conducting sustainability assessments of four different concrete manufacturing processes: (1) 100% of Portland cement (2) 35 % slag cement and 65% Portland cement (3) 50% slag cement and 50% Portland cement (4) 20% fly ash and 80% Portland cement. The results disclose the more sustainable concrete manufacturing process which is 50 % of Slag cement and 50% Portland cement.