Rapid Automation for Airfield Pavement Surface Inspection

Abstract: Automated pavement distress detection tools have sparked considerable interest as their use has shown promise to significantly improve the efficiency of evaluating airfield pavement conditions by reducing inspection time and cost. In addition, advanced automated tools have the potential to significantly influence future operational mission readiness of the pavement structure to support current and projected aircraft missions. The emergence of automated technologies is driving fundamental changes in airfield pavement inspection methods. By exploiting the applicability of these automated technologies, it is hypothesized these tools can improve the efficiency and functionality of the military airfield pavement evaluation programs by determining pavement distress types, severities, and quantities more rapidly in routine evaluations and contingency environments. The US Army Engineer Research & Development and Center (ERDC) and the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) has performed laboratory and field evaluation research on automated pavement distress software and vehicle data collection capabilities. The objective of this research study was to test this hypothesis by enhancing the techniques for incorporating into the pavement inspection process and then quantifying the results with an automated pavement distress detection tool. The results of this study represent ERDC’s singular test case for automated airfield evaluations by assessing software and data vehicle capabilities through field and laboratory observations.