Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) is redefining what is possible in structural design through its exceptional strength, durability, and longevity. As the industry pushes toward more resilient and sustainable infrastructure, UHPC offers unique opportunities to reduce material usage, extend service life, and lower life-cycle environmental impacts. However, quantifying the full sustainability benefits of UHPC remains a complex challenge—particularly when balancing embodied carbon with long-term performance. This session will explore the holistic role of UHPC in advancing sustainability and resilience in the built environment. Presenters from academia, government, and industry will share case studies, research insights, and practical examples demonstrating how UHPC contributes to more efficient construction, reduced maintenance cycles, and improved environmental performance. The session will also open the floor for discussion on metrics, trade-offs, and future pathways to better integrate UHPC into sustainable construction strategies.
Learning Objectives:
(1) Examine case studies showcasing the sustainable and resilient benefits of UHPC in real-world applications;
(2) Identify material characteristics and design approaches that enable lower environmental impact with UHPC;
(3) Understand ongoing research in life-cycle assessment and low-carbon UHPC mixtures;
(4) Engage in discussions around current limitations and opportunities for implementing UHPC in sustainable infrastructure.
Life-cycle Environmental Impacts and Cost of UHPC in Bridge Deck Applications
Presented By: Jin Fan
Affiliation: UC Davis
Description: This presentation reports on a bridge deck deterioration study of UHPC by investigating regional environmental factors through a time-dependent multi-physics finite element modeling approach. Life cycle costs and environmental impacts of a UHPC system are compared with a traditional reinforced concrete deck. Results that will be presented include the time-period for UHPC to become cost effective, maintenance costs, energy savings, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Sustainable Bridge Rehabilitation - Summit Lake Overhead
Presented By: Katrin Habel
Affiliation: Associated Engineering Ltd
Description: UHPC can be efficiently used to extend service life of existing bridges. This presentation demonstrates how UHPC can simplify and accelerate bridge rehabilitation using the example of Summit Lake Overhead in British Columbia, Canada, an existing multi-span steel stringer bridge, where rehabilitation was required to extend its service life delaying carbon-intensive replacement. UHPC was used to repair heavily deteriorated stringer ends and diaphragms. The high adaptability of the solution allowed to employ the same solution for many slightly different geometries and levels of deterioration, minimizing the use custom fabricated steel plates and sections. In addition, the solution proved to be straightforward to apply to a steel structure under load. The use of UHPC also avoided environmentally challenging and costly recoating of the steel structure to obtain the desired service life extension. The presentation will further discuss sustainability aspects of the provided solution. The project also served to build trust on the use of UHPC in rehabilitation and will be deployed with more confidence in future projects.
Sustainable Prestressed UHPC Beams through a Ductile Design Approach
Presented By: Jian Zhan
Affiliation: McGill University
Description: Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) is a modern class of cementitious composite materials known for its superior mechanical properties and durability, making it a prime candidate for sustainable infrastructure solutions. This study introduces an innovative sustainable design approach for prestressed UHPC beams, leveraging hybrid reinforcement with prestressing strands and mild steel rebars. This approach reduces UHPC usage by over 25% while promoting a more ductile failure mode.
Four-point bending tests were conducted on two full-scale beams: one reflecting current practice in China and the other showcasing the proposed new design. Results demonstrate that this approach not only improves the material efficiency of UHPC, but also enhances the ductility and safety of prestressed UHPC beams. Additionally, life-cycle cost analysis and carbon emission assessments highlight the sustainable advantages of the proposed design.
A Generalized Framework for Design Optimization of UHPC Structures
Presented By: Yi Shao
Affiliation: McGill University
Description: Ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) offers superior mechanical properties and durability, driving its rapid adoption worldwide. Compared with conventional concrete, UHPC structures exhibit distinct structural behavior and failure mechanisms, particularly due to the high-strength matrix and inclusion of fiber reinforcement. Their design also involves additional variables (e.g., fiber volume), making it challenging to achieve cost- and carbon-efficient solutions. To address this, this study develops a generalized framework for UHPC structures that minimizes costs and environmental impacts under prescribed structural requirements (e.g., cracking resistance and load capacity). The framework is demonstrated through the design of prestressed UHPC beams. Results show that optimized designs can reduce initial costs by up to 25% and carbon footprints by up to 20%, while enhancing structural safety compared with current practice in US. The proposed framework can be extended to a broader range of UHPC structural systems, offering a rational pathway to reducing both construction costs and associated carbon emissions.
Artificial Intelligence-powered Technical-social-economic-environmental Design of Ultra-high-performance Concrete
Presented By: Weina Meng
Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology
Description: Traditional concrete design practices focus on material properties and economic parameters, often overlooking social parameters. This paper presents a design approach to enable simultaneous consideration of technical, social, economic, and environmental parameters. Advanced machine learning and many-objective optimization techniques are applied to efficiently predict material properties and discover optimal solutions in a large design space involving comprehensive design variables of varying materials provided by different suppliers. The approach has been verified via designing ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) valorizing local materials including wastes in New Jersey, United States, through a prediction-optimization framework. The results show that the proposed approach effectively identified promising solutions, increasing compressive strength and fairness scores by 7% and 17%, respectively, while reducing cost by 28% at a fairness weight of 0.2. This research offers a new path to designing UHPC materials with high mechanical strength, high cost-efficiency, and low carbon footprint while improving socioeconomic fairness.
Structural Performance of UHPFRC Sandwich Wall Panels for Modular Houses under Combined Axial and Flexural Loads
Presented By: Oumaima Awassa
Affiliation: Univerity of Calgary
Description: Sandwich Wall Panels (SWPs) provide an efficient solution for modular and precast construction, combining thermal insulation, rapid assembly, and structural economy. Conventional reinforced-concrete SWPs, however, are limited by high weight, low ductility, and durability concerns. This study investigates the use of Carbon-Nanofibre Ultra-High-Performance Fibre-Reinforced Concrete (CNF-UHPFRC) to overcome these limitations and develop lighter, more durable, and higher-performance panels.
Full-scale CNF-UHPFRC SWPs (3,600 × 1,000 mm) with 50 mm and 38 mm wythes separated by 76 mm of rockwool insulation were connected using GFRP shear connectors to achieve different levels of composite action. Panels were tested under axial, flexural, and combined axial–flexural loading at various pre-compression levels to assess interaction behavior.
Results show that CNF-UHPFRC enables thinner wythes without compromising strength, leading to enhanced ductility, crack control, and load capacity. The data support development of empirical P–M interaction diagrams and highlight the influence of connector stiffness on composite behavior. Overall, CNF-UHPFRC SWPs offer a lighter, more sustainable, and resilient alternative for modular construction, supporting future design-oriented guidelines and standardization efforts.