Analyzing Effects of Environmental Conditions on Response using Operational Airfield Monitoring Data

Abstract: A long term instrumented flexible pavement data collection effort, known as “SMART Runway,” has been used to collect pavement structural response to aircraft loadings. Measured pavement stress and strain response to particular aircraft varies between landing and departure events and changing environmental conditions. Environmental sensor data was used to evaluate the effects of seasonal variation with respect to asphalt pavement response due to military aircraft loading. Environmental data was analyzed for August 2020, January 2021, and June 2022. For the summer aircraft operations, near surface (1.3 cm below surface) asphalt temperature ranged from 47 to 54 ºC, while for winter aircraft operations, near surface asphalt temperature ranged from -3 to 8 ºC. Under these changing environmental conditions, noticeable changes in asphalt strain gauge and base and subgrade earth pressure cell response were observed. Comparisons are then made between measured responses under different climatic conditions and an analytical response model (LEAGL-VE) capable of simulating viscoelastic behavior of multilayered systems under moving loads. Results show that the proposed algorithm provides accurate stress and strain responses under different loading and environmental conditions compared to those measured in the instrumented airfield under live aircraft loading. Findings suggest that the proposed analytical model be considered to supplement conventional layered elastic codes in future mechanistic-empirical design and evaluation procedures.