Research Grant
Development of a guideline for life cycle assessment of structural concrete through meta-analysis and harmonization (Principal Investigator) 07/2018
Institutions: ACI Foundation, Cement Association of Canada (CAC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Sustainable Engineering and Eco-design (LIRIDE)
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Summary of my projects
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Postdoc Activities:
- Leading a team to develop a prospective tool for pavement infrastructure policy-making.
- Compile and analyze pavement performance metrics data from large databases, such as long-term pavement program (LTPP).
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- Collaborate in assessing the surface reflectivity effect on the change in building energy demand due to Urban Heat Island (UHI) and incident radiation change in various neighborhoods incorporating different geometries (Software: QGIS and Tableau, coded in Python).
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- Create meta-models for analyzing the effect of neighborhood characteristics on building energy demand using neural networks.
- Create a context-specific model for evaluating the effect of the radiative forcing effect of pavement reflectivity on the cause and effect chain of climate change.
- Create a meta-model and harmonization of concrete product category rules (PCRs) and underlying Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
Ph.D. Activities:
- A critical review of current knowledge and identifying research gaps in environmental impacts assessment of various pavements (flexible, rigid and composite pavements).
- Writing proposals for research grants and internship employment (NSERC, MITACS programs, and Concrete Research Council, and ACI Foundation)
- Data collection on different life cycle stages of pavement (Production, Construction, Maintenance and Rehabilitation, Use, and End-of-Life)
- Applying different pavement rehabilitation strategies based on road distresses (IRI, cracking, and deformation)
- Investigating life cycle environmental performance of concrete and asphalt pavements in Quebec (Software: Open LCA).
- Assessing the effect of uncertainty and variability sources in construction materials and methods on the robustness of climate change results (Software: SimaPro, Crystal Ball, and MOVES).
- Dynamic global warming impact assessments of pavements considering the temporal aspect of GHG emissions (VBA Excel).
- Developing two environmental assessment tools, namely:
1. Eco-concrete calculator (a collaboration of a graduate student team): An LCA tool for assessing the environmental impacts of various concrete mix designs, considering:
• Alternative cementitious materials and Chemical admixtures
• Recycled aggregates
• Concrete service life
2. Pavement LCA tool: An environmental assessment tool for policy-making of road infrastructures in the province of Quebec, considering:
• Local construction materials and methods
• Dynamic aspects of life cycle inventory
• Consequential modeling framework
• Maintenance and repair schedule and its effects on pavement characteristics and environmental impacts
• Extra car fuel consumption due to pavement roughness and deflection
• Consequences of solar reflectivity of pavements in terms of urban heat island and radiative forcing
• Required lighting energy for road illumination
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Concrete projects
• Production and quality control of self-consolidating concrete for precast elements.
• Compatibility of different chemical-based superplasticizers with blended cement.
• Investigating an optimum superplasticizer for Ready-Mixed Concrete Based on multi-criteria decision-making methods.
• Evaluation of flowability and mechanical properties of cement-based grouts.
• Destructive and nondestructive assessment of concrete buildings in Tehran.
• Assessment of existing Situation, presenting the solution and quality improvement for Ready-Mixed Concrete Industry.
• Investigating the mechanical and the durability properties of blended cement containing slag and natural zeolite.
