Functional condition evaluation of airfield pavements using automated road survey system—a case study of a small sized airport

Abstract

Airports are vital national resources. Airfield Pavements within an airport represents a large capital investment in infrastructural development made by a country. Timely and appropriate maintenance and rehabilitation of such in-service facilities are essential to provide an all-weather surface for safe and regular operations of the aircraft. Pavement maintenance is done based on functional and structural pavement condition evaluation. This paper presents a case study dealing with functional evaluation of airfield pavements of a small sized airport in India. The considered airport consists of two runway, seven link taxiways, three apron areas and an isolation bay with different surface types. Present paper reports the methodology adopted for the functional condition evaluation of the airfield pavements with help of Automated Road Survey System. Further, the evaluated pavement condition was quantified in terms of Pavement Condition Index (PCI) as per the ASTM D5340 with help of PAVER and GIS based software. GIS was used for preparing inventory database and basemaps for the concerned pavementswhich were then used in PAVER software for determining the PCI. The airfield pavement network within the airport was divided into a four-level hierarchy consisting of the network, branch, section and sample. The obtained PCI rating shows that the overall condition of the airfield pavements within the considered airport is satisfactory to good, however some of the areas have distresses that needs to be repaired by localized maintenance.