The Comparison Between Reactive Powder Concrete and Traditional Concrete in Economy and Environmental Conservation of Bridge Engineering

Abstract

The project mainly compared application of the traditional concrete and reactive powder concrete in t-beam bridges. Different designing parameters of reactive powder concrete and traditional concrete were listed. According to those parameters, two traditional concrete t-beam bridge models and five reactive powder concrete t-beam bridge models were built under the same ambient conditions. Based on the outcomes of seven finite element models, the project found that although reactive powder concrete has ultra-high-performance in engineering, which can reduce the material consumption in the superstructure of t-beam bridges, it cannot reduce the construction costs in t-beam bridges. The price of building a reactive powder concrete t-beam bridge is twice more than a traditional concrete t-beam bridge under the same conditions. Reactive powder concrete was traditionally considered as a green concrete, as it can reduce the material consumption and avoid some pollution in manufacture. However, through the calculation of this project, it found that the total CO2 emissions produced in building a reactive powder concrete t-beam bridge is 1.8 times than the figure for building a traditional concrete t-beam bridge under the same condition.