Integrating Embodied Carbon Feedback into Footbridge Design

This paper demonstrates a new workflow that integrates an embodied carbon assessment into a standard footbridge design process.

Engineers are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to minimise the carbon content of their designs. However, evaluating this is often treated as a separate task requiring designers to calculate the embodied carbon of each individual footbridge component. As a result, it is often carried out at a later stage when adapting to a lower embodied carbon design can be more difficult.

A new workflow is developed to integrate embodied carbon feedback in the design process. It involves the use of parametric scripts and the ability to obtain information from finite element analysis (FEA) models prepared using proprietary software such as Lusas and MidasCivil. The use of this gives designers greater flexibility to make meaningful changes to reduce the embodied carbon.

This paper will discuss this powerful methodology and will provide examples demonstrating the benefits of implementing this workflow.

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