Construction Materials Selection and Sustainability

J L STURGES School of the Built Environment Leeds Metropolitan University UK

Abstract
Among the notable technological developments of the 20th century has been the development of tens of thousands of new materials for use in construction and engineering. The construction industry has also grown to the point where it is a very large consumer of energy and materials. Concern for the environment and the impact of anthropogenic activity on the Earths ecological systems has now become acute. We are faced with the problems of material selection, and the environmental consequences of their use. Environmentalists have proposed various methods for assessing the impact of materials and energy use, these include ecological footprinting, ecological rucksacks, embodied energy and carbon dioxide values, and so on. Engineers have put forward rational selection methods for the choice of materials. These techniques will be reviewed and explored in an attempt to provide an environmentally-aware, materials selection methodology for use in construction. Keywords: Sustainability, materials, energy, selection, construction.

INTRODUCTION
Sustainability has become a term of very frequent currency at the end of the 20th century. Despite its frequent use, it is rarely defined. It is used to give a green gloss to statements in situations which are not sustainable, and its use is probably inappropriate in many situations where it is employed. Strictly, the term sustainable means that something is capable of being sustained not for an hour, or a day, or a week, month or year, but indefinitely. The implication is that if some process which uses materials and energy, is described as sustainable, then the materials and energy which are consumed are capable of being replaced by natural or other processes as fast as they are consumed. In many cases materials and energy appear to be consumed at a faster rate than they are being replaced. However, to make a judgement, we would need to know what the respective supply and consumption rates are, in other words, we need some quantitative or numerical index to help us. What are the indices available to us? Environmentalists have proposed various ways of measuring environmental impact, including the ecological footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996) and the ecological rucksack (Schmidt-Bleek, 1994) and these are briefly reviewed. However, there is another important factor. The 20th century has witnessed an explosion in the number of materials that we have at our command. Whereas the Victorians had a couple of dozen materials which had to serve all applications, we now possess between 40,000 and 80,000 different materials (Ashby, 1992). The Victorians materials had to serve in many applications for which they were less than ideal, so it is fortunate that, in the main, their materials were rather abuse-tolerant. One hundred years later, the problem is to make

the optimum choice from the huge number available to us. Engineers have devised rational selection methods for materials selection as part of an overall design methodology (Dieter, 1991, Ashby, 1992). The central themes of this paper are twofold: (i) is it possible to apply rational selection methods to construction materials; and (ii) can these methods be extended to include environmental criteria as well as the straightforward mechanical and physical material property data?

CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS
The construction industry is very important, as it uses larger quantities of materials than any other industry. The UK construction industry is worth around 40 billion, and it consumes approximately 400 million tonnes of materials per annum. The Boeing Corporation has an annual turnover in the region of $30 billion, and it consumes perhaps 250,000 tonnes of aluminium alloys and other expensive materials. Rolls-Royce, the aero-engine manufacturers, turn over 4.5 billion per annum (Jones, 1999) selling between 1000 and 2000 engines of various sizes up to their most powerful model, the Trent (Coney, 1999). These engines all contain significant weights of exotic materials (such as nimonics and titanium alloys) designed to operate at what are, in engineering terms, very high temperatures. So the 4.5 billion turnover is generated on a throughput of less than 5,000 tonnes of material. If the construction industry is considered globally, it is by far the largest consumer of materials on planet Earth. The figures quoted above indicate that the materials consumed by construction are low value, non-strategic materials. The fact that construction materials are low-value should not surprise us; neither should it blind us to the importance of these materials. In view of the quantities used, they have to be cheap, otherwise buildings would be very much more expensive, and not universally affordable, as they effectively are. However, the sheer scale of consumption means that their use has a major impact on the environment, and economists, engineers and environmentalists have all devoted much thought to ways of measuring this impact. A number of criteria or indices of impact have been devised, with the objective of furnishing numerical data, which can help decision making. Qualitative assessments are useful up to a point, but if real progress is to be made it is necessary to quantify the impacts of materials consumption. It should also be recognised that we do not yet fully understand the workings of the life systems on planet Earth. It is becoming apparent that it takes the combined effects of all the ecosystems to maintain the conditions for life. The incomplete nature of our understanding of the Earths biosphere should not deter us from attempting to minimise the impact of anthropogenic activities.

ENVIRONMENTAL CRITERIA
Since construction uses such large quantities of materials, it has a major impact on the environment. The last twenty or thirty years have seen the emergence of the modern environmental movement, and there has been a gradual acceptance of the environmental agenda. In the UK, there is now a Government Department responsible for the environment (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions) and legislation designed to cut down environmental damage is emerging. In order to assess and evaluate such impact, a number of criteria or indices have been devised by economists, engineers and environmentalists, and the more important of these are now reviewed. Embodied Energy This is quite simply the amount of energy consumed in manufacturing a unit quantity of a material, and it is usually expressed in kJ/kg. Its value is determined by the efficiency of the manufacturing plant. Values range from 275 GJ/tonne for aluminium (a high value) to 0.1 GJ/tonne for gravel aggregates (a low value).

Embodied Carbon Dioxide Embodied CO2 is similar to embodied energy. It is the weight of CO2 emitted during manufacture of unit weight of the material, and is usually expressed as kg of CO2 per kg. Again, the value will depend upon the efficiency of the manufacturing plant. Ecological Rucksack The ecological rucksack concept was devised as a way of assessing material efficiency by Schmidt-Bleek (1994). He recognised that many tonnes of raw material could be extracted and processed to make just one kilogram of material. For example, the environmental rucksack for the precious metal platinum is 250,000:1. This means that 250,000kg of material have to be extracted and processed to make 1kg of platinum. On the other hand, natural stone has a much lower rucksack at 1.05:1. We can quarry stone, extracting it in near finished sizes, the 0.05 representing the small amount removed in dressing the stone to finished size. It is apparent that this index will provide a very good way of illustrating and evaluating environmental impact, but could it be used with the rational selection method proposed by Ashby (see below)? To provide an answer to this, it is necessary to analyse exactly what the rucksack is measuring, or, put another way, what are the factors that determine the size of the rucksack. The rucksack can obviously be determined by the size of the overburden when the resource is mined or extracted. The concentration of the species being extracted within the Earths crust will also be significant. The chemistry or thermodynamics of the extraction process will play a part. All of these factors are functions of the physical and chemical properties of the material, ie. they are real material properties. The ecological rucksack can change with time, as does the embodied energy value. Whereas the embodied energy value tends to fall as process technology improves and becomes more efficient, so the ecological rucksack can increase with time as the readily available deposits of ores are worked out, and leaner or less accessible ores are exploited. Copper is an example of a material whose ecological rucksack has increased over time. In the 19th century it was possible to find native copper (i.e., nuggets of pure copper). Then the oxide ores were exploited and worked out, and now very lean, sulphide ores are being worked where the copper content is typically only 5% or less. So the ecological rucksack has gone from around 1:1 to more than 100:1. Therefore, the ecological rucksack can be treated as a material property and incorporated into the Ashby selection methodology, as well as being a good way of illustrating environmental impact. Ecological Footprint The footprint concept assesses the impact of a process by the size of its footprint, i.e., the area of the Earths surface which is tied up in maintaining the process. The concept is due to Wackernagel and Rees (1996), and is proving to be quite powerful. It depends on conversion factors for the areal impact of consumption of all consumer products, and a share of the infrastructure, which uses land. It can be expressed mathematically:

Area required =

(Area intensity)
i =1

(Consumption)i

Four types of land have been identified: i. Consumed land (unavailable) - this is the land covered by the built environment, ii. Energy land - land impacted by energy use, iii. Managed productive land - cropland, pastures, managed forests, gardens, and so on, and iv. Land of limited availability productive natural ecosystems e.g. rainforests. The method cannot be used as a design tool, but it is a very powerful method of illustrating and assessing the approach to limits and the impact of human activity.

Environmental Profiles The environmental profile concept is typified by the work carries out at BRE (Edwards, 1997). It aims to provide an easy-to-use format for designers and architects to use, by considering a number of parameters, such as: smog, europhication, ozone depletion, acidification, land take, and global warming. These parameters cover the materials potential for various kinds of pollution. Having decided on the parameters by which the material will be evaluated, the next decision is the choice of where in the materials life cycle the profile is to be applied. The design of a building goes through a number of stages: the concept for the complete building; individual elements such as floors, walls, roofs, and so on; individual products such as fittings and finishes to go inside the building; and the profiles can be applied at each stage. Environmental Preference Method The environmental preference method originated in the Netherlands in 1991, being developed by Woon/Energie, within the Dutch Steering Committee on Experiments in Housing programme on sustainable living (Anink et al., 1996). It was recognised that there was a need for easily accessible information on the likely environmental impact of various building materials and components, and so the method is embodied in a reference manual. This method is very user-friendly. The architect, engineer or contractor is able to quickly refer to the manual for the preferred solution to his/her requirement. The manual covers the various elements of a building, from floors, walls, roof, glazing, and so on, through to such items as fittings, kitchen units, etc. The various classes of product available are surveyed and ranked according to their environmental impact (for both new build and for refurbishment work). Such factors as cost and aesthetics are not considered. The method also takes account of the facts that present knowledge is incomplete, and that the ideal environmental solution may often not be attainable.

RATIONAL SELECTION METHOD There are various approaches to the problem of selecting materials from the huge numbers now available. Designers can have recourse to materials property charts and data books. Alternatively, they can talk to their colleagues, hoping that by widening the knowledge circle, they will not omit a significant group of materials. Another strategy is simply to specify the same or a similar material to those used in previous, similar designs. All these are valid approaches, but they may result in the specification of a less than ideal material, and overall, a less than optimal solution to the problem. The basis of the rational selection methods devised to date is a recognition that the performance of a component, artefact or structure is limited by the properties of the materials from which it is made. It will be rare for the performance of the item to depend solely on one material property; in nearly all cases, it is a combination of properties, which is important. To give an example, in lightweight design, strength to weight ratio f /, and stiffness to weight ratio E/ will be important. Ashby (1992) has put forward the idea of plotting material properties against each other to produce material property maps. On these maps, each class of material occupies a field in material property space, and sub-fields map the space occupied by individual materials. These materials property charts are very information-rich, they carry a large amount of information in a compact but accessible form. Interestingly, they reveal correlations between material properties, which can help in checking and estimating data, and they can also be used in performance optimisation, in a manner such as that set out below.

Material Property Charts If we consider the complete range of materials, it immediately becomes apparent that for each property of an engineering material there is a characteristic range of values, and this range can be very large. For example, consider stiffness (Youngs Modulus E). Materials range from jelly (very low stiffness) up to diamond (very high stiffness). The properties can span five decades (orders of magnitude), and they must therefore be plotted logarithmically, when set out on material property charts. An example of such a chart is shown in Fig. 1. In this case, one property, the Elastic Modulus, E, is plotted against another, the density on logarithmic scales. It can be seen that the range of the axes span the lightest, flimsiest foams through to the heaviest, stiffest metals. Ashby found that when so plotted, the data points for a given class of material cluster together in one region of material property space on the chart. These diagrams are very useful; they can be used to make material selections. To do this it is necessary to delineate an initial search area (Ashby, 1992).

Fig. 1: Materials Property Chart. Youngs Modulus E, plotted against the Density , on log scales. (After Ashby, 1992) DENSITY, 0JP

DISCUSSION
The rational method of selection developed by Ashby works with the various physical, mechanical and cost information available for all materials. In principle, any specific material property can be used, and so the list of properties can be extended to include environmental parameters such as embodied energy and CO2, and the ecological rucksack. The author has constructed Ashby diagrams for plots of Youngs Modulus (E) v. Ecological Rucksack (Fig. 2) and of Relative Cost (CR) v. Ecological Rucksack (Fig. 3). The results of this exercise are encouraging. Figure 2 shows values of stiffness plotted against the ecological rucksack. The search area for optimum solutions can be delineated, within a minimum value of stiffness, say E = 0.1 GPa), and an upper value of ecological rucksack (1,000:1). It can be seen that all the materials plotted on the diagram (which are many of the materials traditionally used in construction) fall within this area. Interestingly, the traditional materials, wood and stone show the lowest values of ecological rucksack. No data for new materials such as polymers, engineering ceramics or advanced alloys have been plotted, as no data was immediately to hand. The idea at this stage is just to illustrate the concept feasibility.



 h Q B  @   T V G V 9 P H T B I V P ` 



7vpx Tr Xq2 thv Xq thv

8h Trry v 8rr avp Grhq

Trhpu hrh

8r

      @8PGPBD86GSV8FT68Fxtvyxtsqp

Fig. 2: Materials Property Chart. Youngs Modulus, E plotted against the Ecological Rucksack. Looking at the plot of relative cost versus ecological rucksack (Fig. 3), the optimum search area could be below a relative cost of say, 100 and below a rucksack value of 1,000:1. Again, it is apparent that the traditional construction materials fall within this area. As before, no data for the newer materials such as engineering ceramics, polymeric materials or advanced metal alloys have been plotted, as the objective is merely to illustrate the potential of this approach to materials selection. The two examples shown in Figures 2 and 3 are sufficient to demonstrate that the rational selection method proposed by Ashby is capable of working satisfactorily using environmental impact properties as well as the usual mechanical, physical and cost properties. The diagrams work well; the optimum search areas can be delineated and are seen to show materials known to be optimal. The inclusion of data for hundreds of new materials could be expected to furnish similarly reliable selections.

Fig. 3: Materials Property Chart. Relative Cost CR ,Plotted against the Ecological Rucksack. ECOLOGCICAL RUCKSACK (kg spoil/kg of product Before concluding this discussion, it is worth making the point that the achievement of a sustainable state of affairs will involve the industry in looking at what happens to its materials when they come to the end of their useful lives, as well as their initial selection. Just as construction is the major consumer of raw materials, so it is also a major producer of waste demolition waste. One approach is to increase the amount of materials that are recycled. However, to do this better, information on the grades and compositions of the materials present in buildings will be required, and buildings will need to be designed for systematic dismantling at the end of their useful lives. This will enable the setting up of a properly segregated waste stream to provide the materials for recycling, at minimum cost.

CONCLUSIONS
A number of conclusions can be drawn, including:
1.

A rational selection method such the one put forward by Ashby is capable of incorporating environmental parameters such as embodied energy and CO2 or the environmental rucksack concepts, thereby making possible rational selections based on environmental considerations.

2.

This method is not as simple to use as the environmental preference method or the environmental profiles method. However, this rational method could be used to generate data for the environmental profiles and preference methods. The construction industry needs to take steps to better integrate itself into the materials cycle. The quantity of demolition waste needs to be reduced, and more of it should be recycled. To this end, the building designers need to keep full records of materials of construction, and buildings need to be designed for easy dismantling at the end of their useful lives.

3.

REFERENCES
Anink, D, Boonstra, C and Mak, J (1996) Handbook of Sustainable Building: an environmental preference method for selection of materials for use in construction and renovation. James & James, London. 2. Ashby, MF (1992) Materials Selection in Mechanical Design. Pergamon, Oxford. 3. Coney, M (1999) Rolls Royce, Private communication. 4. Dieter, GE (1991) Engineering Design. McGraw-Hill, New York. 5. Jones, A (1999) Sunday Times No 9, 105, 7 March 1. 6. Kelly, A (1994) The changing cycle of engineering materials: A tribute to H.M. Finniston, materials scientist and engineer. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 19, No. 4, 285 297. 7. Lowe, RJ (1997) Defining and meeting the carbon constraints of the 21st century. Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. on Buildings and the Environment, Paris, pp. 425-432. 8. Schmidt-Bleek, F (1994) Carnoules Declaration of the Factor Ten Club. Wuppertal Institute, Germany. 9. Wackernagel, M and Rees, W (1996) OurEcological Footprint. New Society Publishers, Canada. 10. Von Weizacker, E., Lovins, A.B. and Lovins, L.H. (1998) Factor Four: Doubling wealth, halving resource use. Earthscan Publications, London. 1.