Naval expeditionary runway construction criteria : P-8 Poseidon pavement requirements

Abstract

A full-scale airfield pavement test section was constructed and trafficked by the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center to determine minimum rigid and flexible pavement thickness requirements to support contingency operations of the P-8 Poseidon aircraft. Additionally, airfield damage repair solutions were tested to evaluate the compatibility of those solutions with the P-8 Poseidon. The test items consisted of various material thickness and strengths to yield a range of operations to failure allowing development of performance predictions at a relatively lower number of design operations than are considered in traditional sustainment pavement design scenarios. Test items were trafficked with a dual-wheel P-8 test gear on a heavy-vehicle simulator. Flexible pavement rutting, rigid pavement cracking and spalling, instrumentation response, and falling-weight deflectometer data were monitored at select traffic intervals. The results of the trafficking tests indicated that existing design predictions were generally overconservative. Thus, minimum pavement layer thickness recommendations were made to support a minimum level of contingency operations. The results of full-scale flexible pavement experiment were utilized to support an analytical modeling effort to extend flexible pavement thickness recommendations beyond those evaluated.