The main goal of a durable and sustainable airfield is to withstand repeated aircraft traffic loading while minimizing the environmental impact. The objective of this study is to develop a design-life cycle assessment (LCA) framework considering a balanced evaluation of structural adequacy, minimizing emission, and optimizing total energy demand. To achieve this objective, three steps are introduced: an evaluation of the structural adequacy of the design using the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pavement design software FAA rigid and flexible iterative elastic layered design; a preliminary performance check using field instrumentation responses; and a LCA of airfield sections using both deterministic and probabilistic approaches. In addition to presenting the design-LCA methodology, this paper offers a comparative evaluation that covers two perpetual designs (LFP1-N and LFP4-N) and one conventional section (LFC5-N). These pavement sections were built and tested at the National Airport Pavement Test Facility as part of construction cycle 7, funded by the FAA. Responses collected from instrumentation were used to compute field-based coverages to failure. Moreover, life cycle inventories from secondary sources were used to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions and energy demand associated with the construction of these sections. Results show inconsistencies between the field-predicted and theoretically predicted performance. This suggests the need for the additional calibration of the currently used performance models. Moreover, this study shows that under a specific asphalt concrete (AC) thickness limit, conventional AC may be more eco-friendly than a perpetual design.


    Access

    Download

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Iterative Framework for Performance and Environmental Impacts of Airfields


    Additional title:

    Transportation Research Record


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2019-05-05




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    EXPEDITIONARY AIRFIELDS

    Wells, Mike | Online Contents | 1994


    ICAS2014_1037: FIRST AIRFIELDS OF SAINT PETERSBURG - FIRST AIRFIELDS OF RUSSIA

    Lebedev, V. V. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2014


    Superpave for Airfields

    Buncher, Mark / Duval, John | ASCE | 2004


    Airfields for postwar aviation

    Graham, S. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1944


    Simulation of military airfields

    Cusick, Travis / Rodin, Ervin / Amin, S. | AIAA | 1998