Life-cycle assessment of light steel frame buildings: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Light Steel Frame structures (LSF) have become one of the main competitors of traditional construction systems. The optimized material use, its lightness, and the timesaving in the construction phase, show the potential of this technology to reduce environmental impacts. The purpose of this study is to review and analyse the current literature on the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to LSF buildings and identify related gaps. A systematic literature review has been performed to query Web of Science and Scopus databases, highlighting methods, limitations, trends, and tools used to address LCA applied to LSF buildings. Although many efforts have been made to evaluate LSF buildings in comparison with other construction solutions, a gap persists in performing whole LCA. Considering the potential disassembly and reuse offered by LSF and the recyclability of steel, there is a need for future research focusing beyond the end-of-life stage.

Full text

Life-Cycle of Structures and Infrastructure Systems – Biondini & Frangopol (Eds)
© 2023 The Author(s), ISBN 978-1-003-32302-0
Open Access: www.taylorfrancis.com, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license
Life-cycle assessment of light steel frame buildings: A systematic
literature review
G. Marrone & M. Imperadori
Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano, Milan,
Italy
M.M. Sesana
DICATAM Department, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy
ABSTRACT: Light Steel Frame structures (LSF) have become one of the main competitors
of traditional construction systems. The optimized material use, its lightness, and the timesav-
ing in the construction phase, show the potential of this technology to reduce environmental
impacts. The purpose of this study is to review and analyse the current literature on the appli-
cation of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to LSF buildings and identify related
gaps. A systematic literature review has been performed to query Web of Science and Scopus
databases, highlighting methods, limitations, trends, and tools used to address LCA applied
to LSF buildings. Although many efforts have been made to evaluate LSF buildings in com-
parison with other construction solutions, a gap persists in performing whole LCA. Consider-
ing the potential disassembly and reuse offered by LSF and the recyclability of steel, there is
a need for future research focusing beyond the end-of-life stage.
1 INTRODUCTION
Climate breakdown, resource scarcity, ecological collapse, as well as economic uncertainties make
the next years crucial to shape the conversion to a carbon-neutral construction sector. Considering
the increasing number of net-zero energy buildings and the consequent optimization of the oper-
ational energy emissions, within the next years, the building’s embodied energy is likely to become
fundamental towards the accomplishment of sustainability goals (Gervásio et al. 2010).
The European Green Deal (European Commission 2020) aims to eliminate greenhouse gas
emissions through the introduction of circular economy principles in energy-intensive indus-
tries (i.e. steel, cement) enhancing the secondary use of materials, components and products
(European Commission 2014). In this context, the steel industry plays an important role, since
the largest amount of steel produced worldwide is used in construction, material efficiency is
necessary. In reducing embodied energy, weight plays an important role (Mateus et al. 2013).
Therefore, new lightweight building systems such as Light Steel Frame (LSF) have emerged as
a promising solution for low-rise buildings.
In the last 20 years, there has been growing interest in LSF both for residential and indus-
trial applications due to the main advantages offered compared to traditional construction
techniques (Grubb et al. 1999, Abouhamad and Abu-Hamd 2019). LSF is an offsite construc-
tion system which relies on the optimization of the shape in favour of the lightness, thus facili-
tating the transportation and construction phases. Furthermore, the possibility to preassemble
the profiles in panels and volumes offers construction time benefits. Moreover, as a dry con-
struction system, it also has a great potential for circularity e recyclability.
Even though there is a general understanding of the cause-and-effect link between a building’s
environmental performance and its energy needs, the same link is not immediate for embodied
DOI: 10.1201/9781003323020-293
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energy. Hence, is necessary to provide benchmarking values also for the embodied energy (Ger-
vasio et al. 2018). In recent years, many researchers have focused on building performance calcu-
lation within a life-cycle perspective, investigating and comparing different types of buildings,
construction materials, and techniques. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a quantitative approach
to measure and analyse products and processes’ environmental impacts. According to ISO
14040/44:2006, the LCA methodology usually consists of four main steps: (i) goal and scope def-
inition, (ii) life cycle inventory (LCI), (iii) life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), (iv) interpretation
of results. EN15978 regulates the application of LCA in construction works considering environ-
mental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability.
Besides some review articles have been published concerning LCA applied to LSF buildings,
they usually followed the traditional review approach. Therefore, a shared and recognized meth-
odology to perform the review is needed. Considering the growing reputation of offsite construc-
tion systems and particularly LSF both in the scientific community and in the construction
market as a reliable system in terms of environmental impacts and sustainability assessment
(Smith and Quale 2017, Buzatu et al. 2020, Tavares, Soares, et al. 2021, Thirunavukkarasu et al.
2021) the purpose of this work is to give an overview and interpretation of the existent literature.
Through a systematic literature review, the studies on LCA methodology applied to LSF
buildings are investigated, understanding methods, highlighting limitations, tools, and trends,
thereby enabling practitioners and researchers to gain knowledge on the already researched
areas and identifying existent literature gaps. The paper is organized as follows: the second sec-
tion presents the research questions and the process followed for the systematic literature
review. The third section introduces the review of the selected works, highlighting the methodo-
logical choices in performing LCA. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main findings
in the fourth section, identifying literature gaps and suggesting future research directions.
2 METHODOLOGY
This study contributes to the existing literature by synthesising previous scientific works about
the application of LCA methodology to LSF buildings through a systematic literature review.
Xiao and Watson (2019) recognise the need to perform a systematic literature review to find
the current state and gaps of the topic through the breadth and deep analysis of the existing
high-quality literature. In this paper, the systematic review follows the methodology found in
the literature, which consists of four main steps: the definition of the scope and research ques-
tions, the definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria and a synthesis of the findings.
Once the scope of the work has been defined, the authors designed three research questions:
‘What are the methodological choices made to perform an LCA of LSF buildings?’ and ‘What
is the environmental performance of LSF buildings?’, ‘What promising opportunities for
future research can be identified?’. To answer the research questions, the authors queried two
frequently used databases – Scopus and Web of Science. To gather and analyze a significant
and high-quality sample of papers, different spelling (i.e. cold-formed” OR “coldformed” OR
“cold formed”) and different terms (i.e. cold formed, light steel frame, light gauge) have been
used. The search string and the inclusion and exclusion criteria are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Construction of the search string and criteria used for the articles’ selection.
Search string Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria
±Keywords: (“cold-formed” OR “cold-
formed” OR “cold formed” OR “light
steel” OR “LSF” OR “light gauge”)
±AND (“Life cycle” OR “LCA” OR
“Environmental impact”)
±Search in: title, abstract, keywords
±Document type: articles and review art-
icles (Peer-reviewed)
±Articles/review articles
investigating the building
sector
±Articles/review articles
investigating environmental
LCA of LSF buildings
±Full text not available
±Articles not published
in peer-reviewed
journals
±Articles not written in
English
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The databases’ query was executed on 18 December 2022. The literature identification process
retrieved 49 articles from SCOPUS and 42 articles from Web of Science, a total of 91 articles.
After removing 34 duplicate articles, 57 articles remained for the abstract screening phase.
Through the abstract reading, the relevance of each article within the search objectives has been
evaluated with the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Accordingly, 28 articles were out of scope and
related to other disciplines (i.e. metallurgy, chemistry, structural engineering) thus leaving 31 art-
icles for full-text analysis. Once the full-text reading has been completed, the criteria have been
applied again: 3 articles were not readable, while 10 articles were investigating LSF buildings but
environmental LCA. Since the 10 articles don’t meet the criteria, they were not included in the
deep review. The remaining 18 articles were analysed to identify the methodological choices made
in performing LCA on LSF buildings, considering the first three phases of LCA according to ISO
14040/44:2006. A schematization of the methodology used to narrow down the number of articles
from 91 to the final sample of the 18 deeply reviewed papers is presented in Figure 1.
The papers have been analysed to identify methodological choices in performing LCA on
LSF buildings to enable researchers and practitioners to gain insights into previously
researched areas and identify research gaps. The data have been collected in a comprehensive
table divided according to the first three steps of the LCA.
3 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF LIGHT STEEL FRAME BUILDINGS
With the rapid growth of LCA studies in the building sector, also review papers have been pub-
lished to summarize the progress. Although, the review articles published concerning LCA applied
to LSF buildings follow a traditional reviewing approach. In this section, the results of the system-
atic literature review of the 28 identified articles are presented to address the search objectives.
Among the 28 reviewed articles, 18 works are related to the application of environmental LCA to
LSF buildings; the remaining articles are not concerning the specific topic, although they are con-
sidered relevant for the reviewed literature body. Within these 10 works identified, Soares et al.
(2017) published a traditional literature review highlighting key advantages and drawbacks of LSF
in terms of energy efficiency and thermal performance. Many studies focused on Life Cycle Energy
Assessment, Gervásio et al. (2010) published a parametric study on different insulation levels of
a residential LSF building, confronting operational and embodied energy. The study highlighted
that in 16 years the operational energy can overcome the embodied one. On the same page, Santos
et al. (2014), focused on the LSF operational energy by optimization of thermal bridges and
improvement of thermal inertia, thus addressing “life-cycle design”. Other works focused on the cal-
culation of Life Cycle Cost or the adoption of multidimensional methods, acting on the life cycle’s
risks (Zeynalian et al. 2013, Çelik and Kamali 2018, Abouhamad and Abu-Hamd 2019, Sen et al.
2021, Noorzai et al. 2022). Also considering the structural performances, Lu (2016) and Usefi et al.
(2021) addressed the sustainability assessment of LSF.
Figure 1. Flow chart for the identication of the reviewed articles according to inclusion/exclusion criteria.
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Considering the 18 articles related to the application of LCA to LSF buildings, the analysis
follows the first three main steps of the methodology suggested by ISO 14040/44:2006. The
main methodological choices described in the reviewed papers in performing LCA have been
synthesized in Table 2. First, the goal and scope definition is presented, highlighting the type
of building, the type of study performed, the lifespan, the geographical location, the functional
equivalent/unit and the system boundaries. Then, the tools and databases used to create the
inventory of input and output flows (LCI) have been highlighted: we found that there isn’t
a harmonized inventory data collection methodology. Lastly, the choices about the environ-
mental impact assessment (LCIA) are reported. According to this structure, the results are
presented in the following paragraph.
3.1 Goal and scope definition in the reviewed literature
Within the body of reviewed literature, two types of studies have been identified (i) a baseline
study (non-comparative) used to assess individual project performances, (ii) a comparative
study to compare the environmental performances of different construction systems. On one
hand, some methodological choices are shared across the literature, but many others are dif-
ferent and need to be deepened. There is a general agreement on the selection of 50 years life-
span of the building, only one study proposes 90 years. Among the 18 works, the residential
building is the most investigated. Considering the building locations, many areas of the world
have been covered. Some studies addressed the buildings’ environmental impacts in different
scenarios and locations (Tavares et al. 2019, Tavares, Gregory, et al. 2021).
In performing LCA, the definition of the life cycle stages included in the system boundaries is
fundamental and can affect the results. According to EN15978, the life cycle stages are: (i) product
stage (A1-A3), which includes the provision of materials, products and energy; (ii) construction
(A4-A5), which includes transport to the building site and installation; (iii) use (B1-B7) includes
also maintenance, repair, replacement, refurbishment and operational energy and water use; (iv)
end-of-life (EoL)(C1-C4), includes deconstruction/demolition, transport to waste processing and
disposal; (v) benefits and loads beyond the system boundaries (D), this module allows to take into
account the net impacts and benefits of reuse, recovery or recycling after demolition.
Considering the non-comparative approach, both a whole case study building and a single com-
ponent have been analysed. Both Tuca et. al (2012) and Zygomalas and Baniotopoulos (2014)
focused on a whole building, one calculating the impact of the maintenance process and the other
highlighting the type of environmental impact caused by LSF, which mainly affects natural
resources and human health. In the last years, Liu et al. (2022) addressed a new demountable and
modular LSF wall, highlighting the environmental impact advantages of a reusable module. High-
lighting the benefits associated with recycling and reuse, Abouhamad and Abu-Hamd (2020)
included in the analysis also the module D, finding that Global Warming Potential (GWP) is
reduced by 15.4% while the embodied primary energy is reduced by 6.22%, accordingly, the envir-
onmental impacts of LSF are considerably lower than conventional construction systems. Using
the same case study building, Abouhamad and Abu-Hamd (2021) proposed a new framework to
facilitate the decision-making process in selecting sustainable design alternatives.
Recycled steel is used in the production of new steel thus, the relevance of module D in steel
buildings is confirmed by many comparative studies. Vitale et al. (2018) calculated that LSF
has a better environmental performance than reinforced concrete and brick wall buildings,
considering the profiles’ recovery the performance can increase up to 24%. On the same page,
Dani et al. (2022) published a comparative study in New Zealand between LSF and timber
frame buildings. Using a cradle-to-cradle approach, the authors showed that when module
D is considered, LSF has lower emissions: the difference is 1.69 kg CO
2
eq/m
2
/year.
Many comparative studies showed the environmental advantages of timber frames in differ-
ent applications and locations when module D is excluded (Gong et al. 2012, Rodrigues and
Freire 2014, Crafford et al. 2017, Li et al. 2021). Broadly speaking, the literature agrees on the
better environmental performance of LSF among traditional construction systems. For
example, some studies highlighted the environmental advantages of LSF when compared to
masonry buildings (Iuorio et al. 2019, Bianchi et al. 2021, de Oliveira Rezende et al. 2022).
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Table 2. Analysis and synthesis of the reviewed literature.
N. Author(s)
Goal and Scope denition LCI LCIA
Case
study
Type of
study Lifespan Location
Functional
Equivalent/Unit
System Boundaries
Databases Tools Environmental impacts
P C U EoL BLC
1 Gong et al. (2012) R CS of 3
systems
50 years Beijing,
China
Building designs, same
function and design plan
• • • • Ecoinvent; SinoCenter; CAI;
data manufacturers/ literature
SimaPro; Designer’s
simulation Toolkits
PE and CO
2
emissions
2 Tuca et al. (2012) R NCS 50 years Timisoara,
Romania
Whole building • • EU databases SimaPro According to Eco-Indicator 99
3 Rodrigues and Freire
(2014)
R CS of 3
systems
50 years Coimbra,
Portugal
1 m
2
of living area over
a period of 50 years
• • • Tool’s database; data from
manufacturers and literature
SimaPro 7; Energy
Plus
Non-renewable life-cyclePE, CC,
OD, TA, FE, ME
4 Zygomalas and
Baniotopoulos (2014)
R NCS 50 years Greece 1 m
2
of living area over
a period of 50 years
• • • Ecoinvent; ETH-ESU 96;
manufacturers’ data
- According to Eco-Indicator 99 and
CML 2 baseline 2000
5 Crafford et al. (2017) R CS of 3
systems
50 years Cape Prov-
ince, South
Africa
Quantity of materials
required to build the roof
• • • Ecoinvent 3.1 openLCA 1.4.2 According to CML baseline impact
assessment method version 4.4
6 Vitale et al. (2018) R CS of 2
systems
50 years Vaticano,
Italy
The total oor area of the
building: 130 m
2
• • • • • Ecoinvent 3.0.1; data from
manufacturers
SimaPro 8.0.2; Epix7 Respiratory inorganics, Global
warming, Non-renewable energy
7 Johnston et al. (2018) I CS of 2
systems
- Malaysia - • ICE database; Ecoinvent;
manufacturers’ data
- Embodied energy, CO
2
emissions
8 Iuorio et al. (2019) R NCS;
CS of 2
systems;
50 years Naples, Italy 25m
2
;1 m
2
for the
comparison.
• • • • Data from SimaPro 7.3;
Ecoinvent 3.0.1; EPDs; manu-
facturers’ data
SimaPro 7.3 GWP, OPD, POCP, AP, EP, NRE
9 Tavares et al. (2019) R CS of 4
systems
- Different
scenarios
One inhabitant (hab);
1 m
2
of gross oor area.
• • ICE 2.0; Manufacturers’ data - Embodied energy and greenhouse
gas emissions
10 Abouhamad and
Abu-Hamd (2020)
E NCS 50 years Cairo,
Egitto
1 m
2
of building area
per year
• • • • • Tool’s database Athena Impact Esti-
mator v5.04-0100;
eQUEST
GWP, AP, OPD, EP, HHP, POCP,
PE and fossil fuel consumption
11 Tavares, Gregory,
et al. (2021)
R,O CS of 4
systems
30 years Lisbon,
Berlin,
Stockholm
m
2
of built area; total
building stock.
• • • • Ecoinvent 3 - non-renewable energy and global
warming
12 Tavares, Soares,
et al. (2021b)
R CS of 4
systems
50 years Portugal U-value • • • • Ecoinvent 3; Market data SimaPro V8.0 AD, ADFF, GW, OD, PO, AC, EU
and Non-renewable energy (NRE)
13 Li et al. (2021) R CS of 5
systems
50 years China kg CO
2
eq/m
2
•- -CO
2
emissions
14 Bianchi et al. (2021) R CS of 3
systems
- Brazil 1 m
2
• Tally database Autodesk Revit,
Tally
GWP, AP, OPD, EP, SFP, PED,
NRE, RE
15 Abouhamad and
Abu-Hamd (2021)
E CS of 3
systems
50 years Cairo,
Egitto
- • • • • • EPDs - Use of non-renewable primary
energy resources, GWP
16 de Oliveira Rezende
et al. (2022)
R CS of 2
systems
- Brazil GWP Performance of the
whole structural frame
•• Ecoinvent 3.6; site observa-
tion data; previous know-how
openLCA v.1.7 GWP
17 Liu et al. (2022) M NCS - - Specimen 90-60-90 • • • Ecoinvent database Simapro 9.0 GWP and non-renewable energy
18 Dani et al. (2022) R CS of 2
systems
90 years Auckland,
New Zeland
kg CO
2
eq/m
2
/year. • • • • • LCAQuick database LCAQuick V3.4.4 GWP
M: Module; R: Residential, I: Industrial, O: Ofce and E: Educational; CS: Comparative study, NCS: Not Comparative Study; P: Production, C: Construction, U: Use, EoL: End of Life, BLC: Beyond Life Cycle.
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Also, the comparison between hot-rolled steel and LSF in a portal frame of industrial build-
ings performed by Johnston et al. (2018) highlighted the better economic and environmental
performances of LSF, which allows 33% of steel savings.
Besides the comparison with different construction materials, the potential of LSF as
a prefabricated construction system has been addressed by Tavares, Soares, et al. (2021): pre-
fabricated construction has a lower environmental impact (except for abiotic depletion for
LSF) compared to conventional construction systems. The comparative studies analysed, in
summary, show that LSF represents a good alternative to traditional construction systems.
3.2 Life cycle inventory in the reviewed literature
The uncertainty of LCA results occurs also when the inventory phase is performed because of
the missing foreground data. Addressing the LCI phase, it must be highlighted the complexity
of the data collection of the material flows through the system boundaries. Most of the studies
gathered data with the help of well-known databases, such as EcoInvent or databases already
included in the LCA tools used to perform the analysis. In some contributions also Environ-
mental Product Declarations (EPDs) have been used as a data source.
Many studies contributed to the LCA literature through primary data collection directly from
manufacturers. In performing an LCA, different calculation tools are used to address the environ-
mental impacts. From the literature, it can be observed that in the first publications, the main tool
used is SimaPro while in the last years, the increasing sensitivity on the topic allowed the spread of
new simplified tools specialized in building applications, often connected with BIM instruments.
3.3 Life cycle impact assessment in the reviewed literature
In all the studies analysed, the environmental impacts calculated and considered are different.
Among others, the entire body of reviewed literature focused on the calculation of the GWP.
Although, as many parametric studies highlighted, when performing an LCA it is appropriate
to give a complete overview of the performances in all the impact categories, especially in com-
parative studies. Highlighting a better or worst performance between different materials con-
sidering only one specific environmental impact category can lead to misleading conclusions.
4 CONCLUSIONS
This systematic literature review has provided an overview of the key methodological choices
made by researchers in performing environmental LCA on LSF buildings. In this section,
some observations on the reviewed literature are made and research gaps are identified, thus
providing guidelines for future research that can contribute to the progress of the scientific
debate on the topic. The following propositions mirror the main conclusions of our analysis:
– The review has shown that there is a lot of effort invested in comparative studies. Although,
they are not performed considering the same boundary conditions (i.e. different building lay-
outs). In some cases, critical information in goal and scope denition is completely absent;
– The results obtained by different studies are not comparable because they have been conducted
with different methodologies, also considering the location. Concerning this, there is a need to
develop georeferenced and structured data related to the specic construction system;
– The calculations may vary signicantly depending on the data collection, geographical
location, scope, and methodology used. These items should not be used to compare results
between buildings out of the same scope;
– The comparative studies aim to demonstrate the better environmental performance of
a construction technology compared to another. In doing so, some fundamental features
of LSF such as recyclability and durability are often not considered;
– In comparative studies, different assets of the system boundaries lead to different results.
According to the potential recyclability, further developments are needed to assess the
LCA of LSF buildings with a cradle-to-cradle approach which also considers module
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D. The potential recyclability of structural elements is fundamental in net-zero buildings
since they contain up to 60% of the total embodied energy (Berggren et al. 2013). There-
fore, the cradle-to-gate analysis should be revised considering also the new European pol-
icies on the minimum recycled content;
– Further experimental studies with realistic data and coherent methods are needed to
implement and develop reliable and georeferenced benchmarking in different scenarios.
Considering the above, generical statements about the use of specific materials based on not har-
monized methodologies and not related to a specific scenario should be revised. Nonetheless, the
construction market, asks the scientific community for guidance and comparisons between different
construction materials using the right KPIs. In response to this need, the authors are investigating
an embryonic project (ARCADIA - ENEA) developed at the Italian level on some material supply
chains focused also on the construction of a materials database. In conclusion, the authors want to
turn the reader’s attention to three main future research directions, LSF durability, its potential use
in recladding applications and the need to perform the whole LCA.
Steel durability is rarely considered in comparative studies, especially when steel is com-
pared to wood. In this regard, the authors consider it fundamental to deepen the LCA of LSF
through the exploration of different end-of-life scenarios considering that the lifespan of steel
is higher than the building’s one. The matrix of the scenarios should be recalibrated with
meticulous work of sensitivity analysis.
According to the authors’ experience, future research in the application of LCA to LSF
buildings can be done considering the potential application in buildings’ recladding. The
authors believe that the application in this context could highlight the LSF benefits among
other solutions. Lastly, few studies addressed the potential of LSF also in terms of economic
sustainability. Given the advantages of this construction technology, further research is sug-
gested in developing multicriterial methods to perform a whole LCA of LSF, addressing all
the various aspects of sustainability.
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