Flexible airport pavements in Australia have traditionally been surfaced with Marshall-designed dense graded asphalt (DGA). Grooving is undertaken to avoid aircraft skidding incidents during wet weather conditions, as well as satisfying regulatory surface texture requirements. Groove closure is a common distress experienced at airports surfaced with DGA in Australia and has led to the investigation of stone mastic asphalt (SMA) as an alternate runway surfacing. Due to the gap-graded nature of SMA, and therefore coarse surface texture, grooving can be avoided. To facilitate the use of SMA on Australian runways, a performance-based specification was developed in line with the latest advances of airport technology. This paper describes the development of a performance-based specification for Australian airport SMA, focusing on constituent materials and mixture design.
展开▼
