Award of SMI Funding for R&D Project - Associate Professor Yang En-Hua

Congratulations to Associate Professor Yang En-Hua on the award of SMI Funding for R&D Project for his project: Development of Durable, Jointless, and Reduced Embodied Carbon ConFlexPave for Port Use.

Project Write-up

This project is to use a new concrete pavement, ConFlexPave, in the port environment. Laboratory tests has shown that the new concrete pavement, ConFlexPave, is able to reduce up to 50% of the original concrete pavement thickness, and at the same time, extend the lifespan of the concrete pavement to up to 2 times under fatigue loading. ConFlexPave also removes the need for the joints and steel reinforcement that traditionally has been part of the concrete pavement design. At the same time, in line with Singapore’s sustainability goals and as part of PSA energy transition strategy, NTU and PSA are looking to reduce embodied carbon in the construction and operation of Tuas Megaport thru the use environmentally friendly concrete. ConFlexPave could potentially achieve up to 30% carbon savings as well as 20-30% cost saving over its service life as compared to using normal OPC concrete originated from extended durability as well as the removal of the steel reinforcement needed in traditional concrete pavement design. However, in this particular project, NTU is exploring whether it is possible to further increase the carbon savings thru the carbon utilisation approach by incorporating carbon-negative minerals derived from carbonation of local reject brine or waste concrete sludge as fillers in ConFlexPave mix design, as well as the carbon reduction approaches via the use of Ground Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag (GGBFS) and/or Limestone Calcined Clay Cement (LC3) from our local Marine Clay to replace Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). The new formulation could potentially reduce the embodied carbon of ConFlexPave by about 10-15%, resulting in a total 33-35% carbon saving over its service life.