Enabling concrete reuse through digital workflows for a circular built environment

QC 20260904

Abstract

The built environment is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, and waste generation. Concrete, as the most widely used construction material, has a substantial environmental impact. Reusing structural concrete elements offers a pathway toward circularity by reducing demand for new materials and avoiding upfront CO₂ emissions. However, widespread implementation remains limited by technical challenges, such as remaining service life and the lack of standardized information flows throughout reuse processes. This dissertation investigates the reuse potential of structural precast concrete elements recovered from existing buildings that were not originally designed for disassembly. The research establishes and validates integrated digital workflows that combine engineering assessment, environmental evaluation, and digital information management to support systematic decision-making for concrete reuse in new buildings.

The work first examines the capabilities and limitations of existing digital tools for circular construction before developing BIM-based information management guidelines based on the Level of Information Need (LOIN) framework. To link reclaimed physical elements with their corresponding BIM representations, component tracking workflows are developed, supporting their identification and traceability. The research further demonstrates how openBIM standards, including the Information Delivery Specification(IDS), can enable automated validation of reuse-specific information requirements and improve interoperability within circular construction workflows. The thesis also develops an integrated computational workflow for assessing the technical and environmental viability of reuse by combining service life prediction, carbonation modelling, and embodied carbon assessment across multiple life cycles. The findings show that direct reuse provides substantially greater climate benefits than carbonation alone. A probabilistic performance-based framework is further introduced to assess the service life of reclaimed concrete elements for reuse. It focuses on carbonation-induced corrosion, as a key durability concern in concrete buildings, modelling both corrosion initiation and propagation phases. Through parametric analysis and Monte Carlo simulations, results show that reclaimed precast concrete elements can achieve a second 50-year service life, under appropriate exposure conditions and repair strategies. This research provides methods to support the safe, scalable, and climate-efficient implementation of structural concrete reuse within a circular built environment.

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