ASSESSING THE REDUCTION OF CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS THROUGH APPLYING HIGH-STRENGTH REINFORCING BARS TO AN OFFICE COMPLEX BUILDING

The construction industry accounts for approximately 23% of the national energy consumption per year. Considering the production and transportation of construction materials, the ratio of energy consumption increases up to 40 % in this industry. Recently, several studies established effective strategies for reducing the carbon dioxide emissions such as utilisation of low-carbon materials, material recycling, minimisation of materials input, and selection of optimal structural systems. Along with such approaches, there are various studies examined the application of high-strength materials for minimum utilisation of construction materials. Despite this approach to calculate CO2 emissions of structural materials, it is necessary to study the effectiveness and relationships between the implementation of high-strength re-bars and normal rebars. In order to fill this gap, this study examines the reduction of reinforcement bars and CO2 emissions by the implementation of high-strength re-bars in a practical approach. In this study, an office complex building was selected to assess the quantity variation over the normal re-bars. The office complex building is a rigid-frame structure which has 25 storeys above the ground level and one storey in the underground. Based on the analysed data, this study concluded that the application of SD500 and SD600 high-strength re-bars would lead the quantity reduction of about 25% and 50% respectively compared to the structural system designed with SD400. Generally, applications to high-strength materials, especially high-strength re-bars in the study is potentially beneficial in both reducing the input amount of materials and carbon dioxide emissions in the rigid-frame structure.