2010 Calibration Summary

The introduction of new generation aircraft such as the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380, both of which have 6-wheel configurations was the major impetus for new full-scale tests to improve the pavement design methods used to determine pavement thicknesses needed for such aircraft.

APSDS 5.0 has been recently re-calibrated to take account of the new test data (Wardle and Rodway, 2010)  Advanced Design Of Flexible Aircraft Pavements. Wardle, L. and Rodway, B. (2010).).  To accurately reflect the performance of the test pavements, separate calibrations have been developed for 1, 2, 4 and 6-wheel configurations.  Correlation between design outputs and the calibration data is significantly better than achieved by previous calibrations that did not treat the different configurations separately.

Particularly for large aircraft with 4 wheel and/or 6 wheel gears, pavement thicknesses determined by APSDS 5.0 are significantly less than those obtained using the FAA design software, FAARFIELD 1.42.

The following graphs show sample designs for A380-800, B747-400 and B777-300ER and B737-800 aircraft.

References

Wardle, L.J., Rodway, B and Rickards, I. (2001).  Calibration of Advanced Flexible Aircraft Pavement Design Method to S77-1 Method.  Advancing Airfield Pavements, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2001 Airfield Pavement Specialty Conference, Chicago, Illinois, 5-8 August 2001 (Buttlar, W.G. and Naughton, J.E, eds.), pp. 192-201.  Download Calibration of Advanced Flexible Aircraft Pavement Design Method to S77-1 Method – Wardle, L.J., Rodway, B. and Rickards, I. (2001).

Wardle, L. and Rodway, B. (2010).  Advanced Design of Flexible Aircraft Pavements.  24th ARRB Conference, Melbourne, Australia.  Download Advanced Design Of Flexible Aircraft Pavements. Wardle, L. and Rodway, B. (2010)..

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