A Preliminary Systematic Investigation onto Sprayed Concrete's Environmental Performance

Due to concrete's great potential for impact generation, many Life Cycle Assessment studies on that material stand out in specialized literature. Within the scope of a research project entitled "Advanced and Sustainable Sprayed Concrete", this paper provides results of a systematic literature review performed to investigate sprayed concrete's and its constituents' life cycle loads. A meta-analysis was conducted to jointly analyze the paper sample and allow for identification of most frequently adopted methodological choices within published LCAs. Systematic reviews consist of an exhaustive summary of high-quality literature on a particular topic, which, in this case, pointed to a clear research gap on sprayed concrete's LCAs. Regarding constituents, results showed uniformity between cement LCAs and great uncertainty associated to chemical admixtures' life cycle results. This paper's findings are expected to shed light to common practice within building materials' LCA and to generate much needed knowledge on sprayed concrete's environmental performance.