Simulated aircraft load testing and non-destructive evaluation of bituminous pavements

摘要

The US Federal Aviation Administration's National Airport Pavement Test Facility was constructed to generate full-scale accelerated pavement test data for the development of advanced airport pavement design criteria. During the first round of traffic testing, a six-wheel (Boeing 777) landing gear and a four-wheel (Boeing 747) landing gear were trafficked on flexible test pavements until they were deemed failed. Non-destructive tests were conducted at different stages of trafficking to monitor the effect of time and traffic on the structural condition of the pavements. Rut depths were measured at periodic intervals throughout the traffic testing. The primary objective of this study is to characterise the variations in pavement surface deflection under repeated aircraft gear loading and compares the results with the pavement rutting performance trends. The results showed that both the six-wheel and four-wheel test gears produce similar surface deflections and rut depths. There seems to be a correlation between the heavy weight deflectometer surface deflections and rutting performance.