Accurate and efficient surface profile measurement of the airport runway

ABSTRACT

The roughness of the airfield runway is significant for the stability and safety of aircraft taking-off and landing. In view of the problem that the airfield runway roughness measuring instrument cannot accurately measure the large wavelength uneven information, an accurate and efficient method of the airfield pavement roughness measurement is proposed in this paper. Using data collector and data transfer unit control the robotic total station to track and capture the prism, then record the elevation between the prism and the robotic total station. At the same time, the data collector and data transfer unit also control the laser-ranging sensors to measure the elevation between the prism and the measuring points on the pavement. Knowing the elevation of the robotic total station, the elevation of the measuring points can be calculated using the data of the elevation. The curve of the runway surface profile can be measured. Considering the deviation caused by the roll or pitch angle of the vehicle while driving, a revised elevation method is proposed and deduced in this paper. It is verified by experiments that using the new device and the method mentioned in this paper is simple and efficient with high precision.

KEYWORDS:

• Airport pavement
• roughness
• measurement
• accurate
• efficient

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Key Research and Development Plan of China (grant number 2021YFB2600500).