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Pavements 2025

Accelerated Pavement Testing and Instrumentation

Accelerated and Field Testing

Pavement Structural Response Under Controlled Live Aircraft Loading

Monday, June 9, 2025

1:45 PM - 2:00 PM MT

Room: Solana F

Primary Author(s)

Brendon D. Quon, MS

Research Civil Engineer
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC)
Canton, MS, United States

Co-Author(s)

JD

Jesse D. Doyle, PhD, PE

Research Civil Engineer
US Army Engineer R&D Center
Vicksburg, MS, United States
Jeremiah M. Stache, PhD, P.E.

Research Civil Engineer
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Vicksburg, MS, United States
Wayne Hodo, Ph.D.

Research Civil Engineer
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States
TC

Tommy Carr, n/a

Electrical Technician
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States
Jeb S. Tingle, P.E.

Senior Scientific and Technical Manager (SSTM)
Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC)
Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States

Presenter(s)

Athar Saeed, PhD, PE

Engineering Consultant
Saeed & Associates Consultants, Inc. dba Saeed Consultants
Frisco, TX, United States

Abstract: A runway pavement was embedded with pavement response instrumentation in an operational airfield to collect real-time data including stress, strain, and environmental conditions. While this instrumentation collects aircraft response data daily, the location of each aircraft in comparison to the instrumentation locations fluctuates due to lateral variations in aircraft position during takeoff and landing. This paper presents data collected during controlled live aircraft operations to evaluate pavement structural responses. The field testing involved aircraft taxiing at slow speed at specific lateral offset locations to produce direct alignment of aircraft landing gear and embedded instrumentation. This ensures optimal sensor data collection and maximizes the accuracy of the responses gathered. Precise on ground verification measurements (± 1.3 cm) were made of each aircraft’s landing gear actual position for each desired lateral offset to validate the data. For the overall data collection event, three aircraft (F-16, F-25, and KC-135) were utilized with at least three lateral offset positions for each aircraft. Specific to this paper, earth pressure cell instrumentation responses were collected for the KC-135E Stratotanker . Vertical pressure responses from this controlled testing were compared to t LEAGL (Layered Elastic Analysis of Generalized Loadings), an algorithm capable of simulating normal-nonuniform and horizontal-unidirectional loading. To properly simulate nonuniform loading conditions in LEAGL, an estimate of the KC-135 loaded tire contact area was approximated using a radial spring tire model. Results show that LEAGL produced closer stress estimates to measured aircraft responses in the field than conventional layered elastic analysis under conventional normal-uniform loading conditions. The findings from this study can be implemented to validate existing analytical techniques for pavement design and evaluation.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees can expect to learn the following from this session:

Understand live aircraft traffic responses compared to simulated traffic responses
List instrumentation used to collect structural pavement responses
Describe live aircraft response results compared to analytically measured results