ECA of Roof Structures in Different Materials

The engineering community is pressed by lack of adequate solutions to climate change, extreme weather conditions, and natural disasters. In this paper, a series of embodied carbon analyses are carried out on five cases for a roof structure on the Onondaga County Convention Center in Syracuse, New York. The five cases include the original construction structural steel trusses built in 1992, as well as four hypothetical construction cases of the same roof: reinforced concrete, mass timber, and combinations thereof. Design of reinforced concrete and mass timber is based on ASCE 7-22, ACI 318-19, and AWC NDS 2024, respectively, with each optimized for the most efficient material use. Embodied carbon analyses are carried out for each case to compare life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using two computational tools. The results generate unique perspectives in understanding how mass timber can significantly improve sustainability of building construction, thus directly mitigating the adverse impact on climate change attributed to the construction industry.