Preliminary evaluation of the ACR-PCR system for reporting the bearing capacity of flexible airfield pavements

Abstract

Assessing and reporting the bearing capacity of airfield pavements have always been significant tasks in airport engineering, since they support the decision making procedure, which is a core element of Airport Pavement Management Systems (APMS). The official reporting system utilized worldwide during the last four decades is the Aircraft Classification Number – Pavement Classification Number (ACN-PCN) system. However, recently an updated system has been introduced, aiming to overcome the defects of the ACN-PCN system that have been observed during its implementation. This system, referred as the Aircraft Classification Rating – Pavement Classification Rating (ACR-PCR), aims to incorporate the latest advances in airfield pavement design and evaluation and is expected to be fully applicable about 2024. Since this is a transfer period, the current investigation aims to identify any critical aspects arising from the application of the updated system, based on recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airfield pavement evaluation techniques. On this basis, the transferability between the two system is examined, providing useful commentary and remarks for airport authorities, who would like to implement the ACR-PCR method to its full extent. The analysis shows that the transferability between the two systems seems not to be feasible and the implementation of the updated ACR-PCR may present several issues, such as the modification of the existing reported bearing capacity.

Keywords

• Airfield pavement reporting
• Bearing capacity
• ACN-PCN
• ACR-PCR
• Decision-making