Abstract
The conditions of airport movement-area pavements play a primary role on safety and regularity of airport operations; for this reason, the aerodrome operator needs to periodically survey their condition and provide their maintenance and rehabilitation in order to ensure the required operational characteristics. To meet these needs efficiently and effectively, the Airport Pavement-Management System (APMS) has proved to be a strategic tool to support decisions, aimed at defining a technically and economically sustainable management plan. This paper aims to investigate the theoretical elements and structure of the APMS; the appropriate methodologies to guarantee a constant updating of the system in all its aspects are presented, focusing on the specific case study of a medium-dimension Italian airport. The article describes the methods and the equipment used for the high-performance surveys and the condition indexes used for collecting and analyzing the data implemented to populate the APMS of Cagliari airport. Two major survey campaigns were carried out: the first in 2016 and the second in 2019. Both surveys were carried out using the same subdivision into sample units, following the ASTM D5340-12 criteria, to correctly compare data collected in different years. In order to sufficiently populate the APMS database, the measured and back-calculated data were stored and integrated using daily acquired pavement reports since 2009 and stored with the specific intention to develop customized decay curves for Cagliari Airport pavements. Preliminary results on the sustainable use of the APMS were reported even with data collected in a limited period and successfully applied to runway flexible pavement.
Highlights
Pavements are part of a complex system of airport infrastructures that contribute to determine safety and regularity of aviation operations
The need for systematic verification of the airport infrastructure is established by requirements and rules specified by the national and international aviation authorities: as established in the European Basic Regulation 2018/1139 [5] issued by the European Council and Parliament, the aerodrome operator has to implement actions to monitor a series of functional and structural characteristics of the pavement that contribute to determining the effective operational status of the infrastructure
The first aspect to emphasize is linked to the availability and updating of information: the possibility of carrying out survey campaigns with expeditious methodologies on a georeferenced basis facilitates the supply of a coherent and accurate database equipped with an information potential that does not run out in the short term but builds the history of the infrastructure
Summary
Pavements are part of a complex system of airport infrastructures that contribute to determine safety and regularity of aviation operations. Given the extension of their surfaces (i.e., runways, taxiways, aprons), pavements construction and maintenance constitute an important economic investment For this reason, the aerodrome operator needs to periodically assess their conditions and schedule rehabilitation to optimize the use of available budget. The need for systematic verification of the airport infrastructure is established by requirements and rules specified by the national and international aviation authorities: as established in the European Basic Regulation 2018/1139 [5] issued by the European Council and Parliament, the aerodrome operator has to implement actions to monitor a series of functional and structural characteristics of the pavement that contribute to determining the effective operational status of the infrastructure. This condition is necessary to achieve the aerodrome certification issued by the national [6] or international [7]
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