Life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost (LCC) studies of lightweight composite flooring systems

The growing need to save material and energy resources, together with the increasing concern over the material impact on the built environment economy has led the need for redesigning critical structural elements and systems. Flooring systems are the top amongst the list of the highest impact after the partition walls when comparing to other non-load bearing construction elements. This paper focuses on the advantages of lightweight flooring systems and contributes towards the development of a novel prefabricated ultra-shallow and lightweight flooring system. The used methodology comprises the environmental (by applying the TRACI method) and economic life cycle analysis (LCA). The environmental and economic impacts of three types of flooring systems are studied and compared. The first type is a prefabricated floor (Cofradal260), is a common solution in residential buildings in France, the second type is a hollow core precast floor with an in-situ concrete finishing layer, and the third type is the proposed system. The assessment showed that the embodied energy and embodied GHG emissions of the proposed flooring system are 28.89% and 37.67% lower than the one using Cofradal floor, and 20.18% and 35.09% lower than the one using hollow core precast floor units. LCA showed that the proposed flooring system reduced 13.08% of construction cost and 41.83% of end of life cost in comparison with Cofradal260 slab, and 1.87% of construction cost and 18.95% of end of life cost in comparison with the hollow composite precast slab.