Paper Details

Airport runway pavement is generally subjected to multi levels of impact loadings due to the hard landing of exceptionally large and heavy weighted aircrafts and can be subjected to high velocity and heavy weighted falling objects during accidents, terrorist attacks etc. As a consequence, surface depression, rutting and potholes are often visible for heavily serviced runway pavements or severe damage after accidents. It is therefore, necessary to evaluate the impact resistance of the conventional runway pavements and develop new multi-layer composite and concrete runway pavements to increase the resistance to impact load. The FE model was well validated through drop-weight impact test results to successfully model the dynamic response of runway pavement under impact loading. The numerical study further confirmed the improved impact resistance of the proposed multi-layer composite to resist impact loads. Furthermore, large scale FE model was developed to simulate the runway pavement and aircraft interaction under moving and impact loading. Based on the developed 3D model, parametric studies were carried out initially on the small scale model and then, on large scale model to identify the key parameters affecting the runway resistance to impact loads.

Multi-layer composite runway pavement, impact load, moving load, impact resistance, finite element analysis