Metodologia de avaliação do ciclo de vida de sistemas construtivos: aplicação em um sistema estruturado em aço

Abstract

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the tools used to analyze the environmental impacts of building materials, by evaluating the environmental performance of the material from the "cradle" to "grave". For this purpose, were used inventories containing inputs and outputs during the life cycle of building materials. The creation of Brazilian database of building materials is in early stages of development, while in some countries these data are already consolidated. Besides the lack of data, should be considered that the environmental assessment of a building is not the sum of the LCA results for each material. This is the set that includes the materials and the characteristics relating to the interfaces between these and their behavior in the building system. Considering the delays in building this database, the concept rescued in this work is that each building is unique, and that the assessment of life cycle in the Brazilian civil construction may be more useful as a tool to minimize environmental impacts. To this end, a methodology of use of LCA in building systems is proposed, called Environmental Assessment Methodology Building Systems (MAASC) using the Simapro software. This proposal covers the current status of LCA of Brazilian civil construction and the possibility of already use this tool without national data. Considering the absence of Brazilian data for the construction of a LCA, it was decided to evaluate a building system that would consist of a single raw material: steel. Thus, data were collected from the steel structural system, its inputs and outputs from the manufacturing process and processing of steel, the stage of work, use and maintenance to the dismantling of the building, including the disposal of materials (cradle to grave). So the unprecedented scientific contribution highlighted in this thesis is the construction of a methodology that meets the demands of the building systems and the data collection of steel production, as well as processing of this for use in the civil construction and its behavior over the life and disposal, contributing to the development of inventories of civil construction products.