Estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements considering environmental factors

Abstract

The mechanistic-empirical analysis approach assumes a fixed environmental condition in estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements, which may introduce some errors with the real situation. This paper investigated the influences of moisture and frost on resilient modulus of subgrade soil and unbound materials, as well as the influences of temperature on modulus and Poisson’s ratio of asphalt mixture. A time-sharing damage accumulation method, which considered the environmental factors in pavement damage calculation, was provided in this research. Based on the method, this paper proposed a methodology to predict the remaining life of in-service airfield flexible pavements, and a case study was conducted using this methodology. The result shows that environmental factors significantly affect the damage calculation of airfield flexible pavements. Besides, it has been found from the case study that the methodology is applicable for estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements. The final result of the case also indicates that the methodology provides a relatively accurate result of the remaining life of in-service airfield flexible pavements.

Keywords:

• Airfield
• flexible pavements
• environmental factors
• time-sharing damage accumulation
• remaining life

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [U1433201].

Notes on contributors

Hongduo Zhao

Prof Hongduo Zhao received his Ph.D. degree from the Tongji University. He was a visiting scholar at The University of California, Davis from 2009 to 2010. He is now the Professor and Dean at the Transportation Engineering College, Tongji University, China. His research interests include smart pavement and airport engineering.

Lukuan Ma

Mr Lukuan Ma received his BS degree at the Highway College, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China in 2013. Since then, he has further pursued his Ph.D. degree at the Transportation Engineering College, the Tongji University, China until now. His main research interests include airport pavement design and evaluation.

Jiake Zhang

Dr Jiake Zhang received his Ph.D. degree from Iowa State University. Dr Zhang is currently the Research Associate at Tongji University and his research interests consist of pavement construction and materials.