Deployable Structural Evaluation Techniques for Nontraditional Airfield Asphalt Pavements

Abstract: This paper will discuss the results from accelerated pavement testing experiments conducted with a deployable aircraft load simulator to investigate the structural capacity of nontraditional airfield asphalt pavements under heavy cargo aircraft loads. The condition and properties of six airfield pavement sites were determined using nondestructive, i.e., heavy weight deflectometer, semi-intrusive field-test, i.e., dynamic cone penetrometer, methods, and forensic test pits after pavement failure. The pavement sections were trafficked until at least a rut depth of 1.0 in. was recorded. Rutting and pavement stiffness data were collected at specific traffic intervals. The results from the forensic test pits revealed that the selected pavements’ subsurface layers were in a poor condition, confirming that these pavements met the definition of a nontraditional airfield pavement. The APT data were leveraged to advance existing pavement evaluation techniques. A pavement performance model was developed considering the permanent deformation behavior of the nontraditional asphalt pavements. Furthermore, simple pavement design and evaluation curves were generated with the new performance model to provide a rapid evaluation technique during contingency aircraft operations. This study found that an expedient traffic mission (100 passes or fewer) of a C-17 could be satisfactorily accomplished on nontraditional airfield pavements, and the pavements’ service life could be potentially increased by operating a C-130 aircraft. The contingency design and evaluation curves can be readily employed by military airfield evaluation teams to execute expedient aircraft missions in remote locations.