Structured Management of Airfield Pavements: Fid-Bau Portal

Structured Management of Airfield Pavements

Drenth, Kars P. / de Graaff, Ivo F.

The volume of air traffic continues to grow, resulting in an increasing number of aircraft movements. To cope with such growth it is necessary to make optimal use of all available runways, taxiways and aprons. An optimum utilization of such resources also means that maintenance has to be structured into a planned approach making it a prerequisite to have insight knowledge of the performance of the pavements, asphalt as well as concrete. By carrying out the right maintenance at the right time, the airport will reduce the overall need for maintenance, which in turn will produce economic benefits. The pressure on the availability of at least three runways at all times due to environmental reasons, noise, does mean that no unforeseen maintenance can be allowed and that the condition of these pavements has to be forecasted based on reliable performance indicators and performance models. This situation made Amsterdam Airport Schiphol decide to start already in 1994 with a systematic approach of maintaining the condition of all pavements. This pavement management methodology is based on the MicroPAVER Pavement Management System using the pavement condition index (PCI) surveys as a rating procedure. As pavement condition surveys only show visually detectable distresses, other condition measurements are used to enhance this system. The pavement condition is periodically evaluated using various condition measurements such as non-destructive deflection testing, roughness, skid resistance, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and core-borings. This method of maintaining pavements is called Structured Management. The system used at Schiphol Airport shows clearly how managers, maintenance engineers and field-level personnel can take advantage of the information made available in a structured process.