Integrated Non-Destructive Survey for the Prediction of Remaining Servicing Life of Airfield APRONs

摘要

The project of rigid pavements in airport aprons is a complex process considering several factors, spanning from the critical aircraft that is expected to park in the stand to the subgrade bearing strength. However, issues occurring during the construction phase or overloading of the pavement are likely to reduce the service life with respect to the design expectations. This work presents outcomes from a still on-going non-destructive monitoring activity carried out from 2008 over three park stands located in APRON 700 in Fiumicino Airport of Rome, Italy. In particular, the three stands were subjected over the years to different loadings that produced various rate of damage of the concrete slabs. The area was surveyed, at different time intervals, by visual inspection of the cracking (i.e., calculation of the pavement condition index), heavy weight deflectometer (HWD) testing, and ground penetrating radar. By comparing the outcomes from NDTs with the visual evolution of the damages over the area, it was possible to stress out the evolution pattern of the decays and to determine a reliable domain of service life by means of damaging versus time prediction curves.