Concrete mixtures are complex material systems with a multitude of characteristics that decision-makers may deem important. These characteristics can include economic, environmental, mechanical, and durability-related properties of a concrete mixture. However, traditional concrete mixture design typically employs long-standing heuristics, which satisfy requirements for physical characteristics but are unable to minimize specific characteristics, such as the cost or carbon footprint of the concrete mixture. This work considers these performance characteristics by implementing simulation-optimization as a new paradigm for designing concrete mixtures. The utility of the simulation-optimization framework is tested for several concrete design case studies that simultaneously consider compressive strength, embodied carbon, service life, and cost. Results from these scenarios demonstrate that the local conditions of the case study dictate the most important parameters of the simulation-optimization (i.e., relative constituent costs, in situ service-life conditions). Out of all other parameters, constituent cost and service-life conditions impact the set of optimal concrete mixture designs in terms of the types and quantities of mixture ingredients that are utilized. We present a simulation-optimization framework that is demonstrated herein to be a holistic design tool that allows designers to quantify and visualize tradeoffs between critical concrete performance metrics. Such a tool can be used to precision-tailor low-carbon concrete mixtures to the exact preferences of the designer.

中文翻译：

---

低碳混凝土混合料设计的多目标优化技术

混凝土混合物是复杂的材料系统，具有决策者可能认为重要的多种特性。这些特性可以包括混凝土混合物的经济、环境、机械和耐久性相关特性。然而，传统的混凝土混合物设计通常采用长期存在的启发式方法，它满足物理特性的要求，但无法最小化特定特性，例如混凝土混合物的成本或碳足迹。这项工作通过将模拟优化作为设计混凝土混合物的新范式来考虑这些性能特征。模拟优化框架的效用在多个混凝土设计案例研究中进行了测试，这些案例研究同时考虑了抗压强度、隐含碳、使用寿命和成本。这些情景的结果表明，案例研究的当地条件决定了模拟优化的最重要参数（即相对成分成本、原位使用寿命条件）。在所有其他参数中，成分成本和使用寿命条件会根据所使用的混合物成分的类型和数量影响最佳混凝土混合物设计。我们提出了一个模拟优化框架，该框架被证明是一种整体设计工具，允许设计人员量化和可视化关键具体性能指标之间的权衡。这种工具可用于根据设计师的确切偏好精确定制低碳混凝土混合物。