Static Analysis of Rigid Pavement Runway under the Influence of Aircraft Loading by Finite Element Technique

Abstract

The runway is the most crucial part of any airport infrastructure and is designed to withstand the weight and impact of large aircraft. Runways must be durable enough to resist deformation, cracking, and wear caused by constant traffic. Therefore, a lot of attention is paid to the design and construction of airport runways. This paper presents a finite element method-based modelling process for the study of a rigid pavement runway with a jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP) and examines the various static response characteristics of the rigid pavement runway when loaded with different kinds of aircraft. A three-dimensional model of the rigid pavement runway was modelled and evaluated using non-closed form finite element method (FEM) based ANSYS software. The model has been simulated, and the resultant deflections and stresses have been evaluated while taking into consideration the impact of various types of aircraft loading and other engineering parameters. Identifying critical variables that influence the model’s various response parameters was one of the study's key findings, and the effects of each parameter had been thoroughly discussed. Furthermore, the software utilized in this work was verified by a closed-form numerical problem, and the results were in excellent agreement with earlier research findings with a maximum divergence of less than 1 percent, proving the accuracy of the program used in the present study. The rigid pavement runway model spanning 13.84 m was examined using the current modelling process. However, researchers can use the above-mentioned modelling procedure to analyze any runway pavement structure.

Keywords

• rigid pavement runway
• jpcp
• finite element method
• ansys, aircraft loads