Impulse Response Dynamic Stiffness Decay in Aging General Aviation Airfield Pavements

Abstract

Managing pavements requires a reliable pavement performance indicator. The current study examines the feasibility of using the impulse response (IR) method to provide a reliable, mechanistic measure of current and future pavement performance. In an extension of the pavement family approach, IR-inferred dynamic stiffness (kd) decay models were generated for pavements with asphalt concrete (AC) and portland cement concrete (PCC) surfaces. AC pavement family subdivisions devised with the total thickness of structurally capable layers were found to yield the most significant correlations. Grouping data from all IR tests on PCC pavement sections into one family yielded a coefficient of determination of large significance with low scatter in the data. A statistically significant correlation could not be established for AC pavement between IR-estimated kd and the low-strain modulus (ESEIS) inferred by the method of spectral analysis of surface waves. In PCC pavements, a weak correlation was observed between kd and ESEIS. Though the sample used for comparison with structurally distressed sections was small, results suggested that in AC pavements, visually inferred traffic-related distresses did not correlate with structural failure. For PCC pavements, visual identification of structural distresses was more accurate than for AC pavements.