Development of a New Design Methodology for Structural Airfield Mats
The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is currently evaluating the performance of aluminum, fiberglass, plastic, and composite airfield mats under both F-15 and C-17 aircraft loads. Historically, the design methodology to determine the number of aircraft passes that a particular airfield mat will sustain before failure has been empirically correlated to the subgrade California Bearing Ratio (CBR) and the equivalent single-wheel load. A new mechanistic design approach was developed in which the performance of the airfield mat is related to the maximum deviatory stress being applied to the subgrade. New design criteria relating this deviatory stress to the number of passes for aircraft wheel loads were also developed. A new mat response model, as well as comparisons to experimental measurements collected from full-scale traffic test sections conducted at the ERDC, is presented in this paper to show the applicability of the new design procedure.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Gonzalez, Carlos
- Rushing, Timothy Wallace
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2009-1-11 to 2009-1-15
- Date: 2009
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: DVD
- Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 15p
- Monograph Title: TRB 88th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Aircraft; Aircraft operations; Airport facilities; Airport runways; Aluminum; California bearing ratio; Composite materials; Design; Fiberglass; Landing mats; Plastics; Wheel loads
- Subject Areas: Aviation; Design; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01124164
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 09-1998
- Files: TRIS, TRB
- Created Date: Mar 16 2009 7:22AM