Author(s)

W. Cai, H. Geng, X. Chong, J. Zhang, Y. Zhang

Abstract

It is necessary for airfield managers to ensure that airfield pavement is used sustainably and to predict pavement service life accurately. According to the specification for design of airport cement concrete pavement, this paper adopts a reversed design method to study the applicability of an airport cement pavement structure, which constructs a limit state equation based on the number of aircraft surplus repeated action. What’s more, there are 4 confirmed key calculative parameters that have an effect on evaluating the applicability of airport cement pavement structure, i.e. load transfer coefficient, equivalent modulus of elasticity of foundation, thickness of pavement slab and flexural tensile strength of concrete. Taking some airport for example, the standard referenced values of pavement structure parameters have been set in advance. The level of 4 parameters variation selects 5% respectively. Then their effect of aircraft movements is analyzed correspondingly, i.e. the rank of influence degree is that: flexural tensile strength of concrete>thickness of pavement slab>load transfer coefficient>equivalent modulus of elasticity of foundation. In the meanwhile, with the effect of surplus aircraft movements analyzed deeply in different areas versus different types of aircraft, we can find that the distribution of aircraft movements in different areas of airport pavement is different in the same type. And where the most surplus movements take place is the central section of the runway. What’s more, it is necessary for the airfield pavement to limit the movements of aircraft with heavier tire pressure and a larger designed dynamic load, which has greater pavement fatigue damage than any other aircraft.

Keywords

airport, cement concrete pavement structure, bearing capacity, aircraft movements