ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY SMART CONSTRUCTION

Modern economic, social and environmental challenges require a new type of construction that ensures resilience, low construction costs and ease of maintenance. Material production, off-site prefabrication of structural elements and final assembly should minimise the environmental impacts, such as greenhouse emissions and waste production. The Smart Construction Group headed by the University of Western Australia has identified the key routes of research required to address the challenges the construction industry faces today as: • Reduction of CO2 production by using mortarless construction, renewable materials and

recycling, • Energy efficiency of buildings through improved thermal insulation and energy retrofit, • Reduction of labour costs and improvement of workplace productivity through

automation of construction and reduction of safety risks, • Building sustainability – enhanced resilience and improved structural longevity, • Minimisation of demolition waste as a step towards achieving circular economy.

Development opportunities The Smart Construction Research Group at UWA is seeking expressions of interest in the development of the following projects: • Novel resilient and protective mortarless structures. • Hybrid concrete: Novel applications and waste utilization. • Sustainable Pavement and Carbon Sequestration. Using recycling materials and biochar

Smart Construction Research Group

W/Prof Arcady Dyskin, UWA Dept of Civil, Environmental

and Mining Engineering, Email: arcady.dyskin@uwa.edu.au

Prof Elena Pasternak, UWA

Dept of Mechanical Engineering,

Email: elena.pasternak@uwa.edu.au

Prof Yuxia Hu, UWA

Dept of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering,

Email: yuxia.hu@uwa.edu.au

Dr Mohamed Elchalakani. UWA Dept of Civil, Environmental

and Mining Engineering, Email: mohamed.elchalakani@uwa.edu.au

Dr Igor Shufrin, BGU

Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Email: shufrin@bgu.ac.il

Novel resilient and protective mortarless structures

A new opportunity for designing resilient structures arises in adopting mortarless construction based on topological interlocking. A topologically interlocked structure (TIS) consists of building blocks of special shapes such that no internal block can be extracted from the structure without disturbing its neighbours. The peripheral blocks are constrained either by self-weight of the TIS or by constraining frames or posttensioned tendons/cables. The absence of binder in the TIS improves structural integrity also allowing for some relative movement between the blocks, which ensures energy absorption and containment of high amplitude vibrations (e.g., seismic or blast vibrations). The TISs have immense potential to provide a comprehensive solution to the challenges associated with enhancing the resiliency of civil engineering structures and are expected to demonstrate a wide range of beneficial properties: extreme energy and sound absorption, self-healing, elevated fracture toughness, tolerance to missing elements, high design flexibility, and the capacity for reusing the elements.

Topological interlocking supports modular construction, which reduces construction time and costs, improve on-site safety and lower the environmental impacts through the reduction of the construction waste.

This project will establish a design and optimisation methodology, derive a suit of computational tools and develop prototypes for novel resilient structures with topological interlocking elements. Applications are envisaged to blast protective structures, impact-resistant barriers, and the seismic retrofitting of civil structures. It will develop the structural elements suitable for robotic construction.

Hybrid concrete: Novel applications and waste utilization

In Australia, 50 million tyres are wasted every year. Tyre landfill is harmful to the environment. It provides breeding grounds for mosquitos, rats and other animals. An alternative to the landfill disposal is to incorporate tyres into the manufacture of the so called Rubberised Concrete (RuC), which will conserve natural resources and reduce the amount of tyres entering the landfill. RuC is a relatively new and innovative field of research aiming at providing a sustainable way of disposing tyres as well as complementing concrete properties. For example, the partial replacements of sand and cement by rubber enhance the mechanical characteristics of concrete in terms of its fracture properties, ductility, impact and seismic resistance. Thus adding rubber to concrete increased the energy absorption of scaled rigid barriers by 100%. Our research results showed that the rubber change the failure mode under static and impact loadings, and the RuC is highly suitable for structures subjected to impact loading.

The main objective of this project is to develop a new paradigm for

resilient structures based on the principles of topological interlocking.

The goal of this project is to facilitate the use of the rubberized concrete for the

construction of protective structures, road-side barriers and energy absorption

structural elements.

Sustainable Pavement and Carbon Sequestration. Using recycling materials and biochar.

Currently, we are facing an escalating waste crisis. To contribute to a sustainable and circular economy, the project aims at incorporation of recycled polymers, such as recycled soft plastics and crumb rubber reclaimed from scrap tyres and conveyor belts into WA’s conventional asphalt mixture. It is expected that the polymer-modified asphalt mixture can improve its mechanical properties, while the use of recycled materials in road pavement could save the construction and maintenance cost and reduce the consumption of limited natural resources. A better pavement with less landfill is the ultimate goal of our research project.

Biochar is a solid by-product through a biomass pyrolysis process. The current use of biochar is primarily towards improving soil function as a fertiliser in agriculture. It is a new application of biochar in pavement designs to lock down the carbon in the pavement – i.e. carbon sequestration. There are four different biochars collected from various plants Western Australia. The performance of asphalt was tested after the biochar was added to the bitumen mix by up to 25% by weight. Both hot mix and cold mix bitumen were tested. It is found that the resilience modulus can be improved by adding biochar to the hot mix. The project aims at developing hot and cold mix asphalt incorporating waste elements.

Visit our website https://www.smartconstruction2019.com.au

This project aims at incorporation of recycled soft plastics and crumb rubber reclaimed from

scrap tyres and conveyor belts into the asphalt mixture.