Airport pavement design considering areal load distribution

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the wheel track areal distribution of a short takeoff and landing aircraft was tested by using the self-developed airport pavement wheel track test system. The transverse and longitudinal distribution regulations of the wheel track of single-aircraft takeoff, dual-aircraft takeoff and landing were statistically analyzed, and the coverage of each point on the pavement were obtained. The joint simulation of MATLAB and ABAQUS was utilised to realise the fast calculation of the stress state at each point of the pavement. The longitudinal load of the pavement calculated based on the six-degree-of-freedom aircraft taxiing model was substituted into the finite element model, and the allowable coverage at each point on the pavement was calculated combined with the fatigue equation of concrete. Furthermore, an airport pavement design method based on the cumulative damage areal distribution was proposed, which could provide damage characteristics at any point on the pavement. The case analysis shows that the thickness of pavement within 600 m at both ends of the pavement for Aircraft A can be designed as 22 cm, and that of the middle pavement can be designed as 19 cm.

KEYWORDS:

• Pavement design
• wheel track distribution test
• cumulative damage areal distribution
• finite element model
• thickness

Acknowledgements

Ya-zhi Wei: Conceptualization, Data collection, Analysis and interpretation of results, Draft manuscript preparation. Xiao-lei Chong: Conceptualization, Data collection, Analysis and interpretation of results. Liang-cai Cai: Conceptualization. Guan-hu Wang: Conceptualization. Xin-gang Shi: Conceptualization. Geng Hao: Data collection. Duo-yao Zhang: Data collection.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51578540].