"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
The objective of this EAGER project is to create a framework for collection of life cycle inventory data for fiber reinforced polymer composite infrastructure materials. While the methods required to carry out a life cycle assessment are well defined, the underlying datasets needed to support the assessment are sparsely populated. Within the ISO 14040 series standard for life cycle assessment these datasets are termed a life cycle inventory (LCI). Without a robust life cycle inventory, the result of more comprehensive life cycle assessment based on this data remains uncertain at best. Therefore, the proposed research serves as an important foundation for future research on the larger sustainability assessment and design of FRP infrastructure.
FRP materials are increasingly being used in infrastructure with little knowledge of their full sustainability footprint. As part of outreach efforts within this project, all life cycle inventory results will be made available to the United States National Life Cycle Inventory Database administered by the United States Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
