Evaluation of settlement due to lift behavior at airport runway strip in Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to predict soil strength at runway strip to have within the designated CBR values. According to Aerodrome Design Manual (Doc 9157 AN/901A) by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), there are loopholes in going further than 15 cm below and it is only describing CBR strength but not the implication to the ground of having such CBR values. Airports all over the world are doing the same applications in gathering information of their runway strips. Innately, preventive maintenance program will be introduced to mitigate soil strength improvement issues, failure to do so will resulted in fatality if the soil unable to cope with such loading form aircraft when it reaches the runway strip. As this information could be used to predict the settlement or displacement values (cm) whenever different set of weights were imposed on the soil layer. Hence, the settlement values were resulted in this project are due to having different aircraft weights from aircraft of B737, B747 and B777 as a part of input for the simulation. With input such as loading set, CBR values from Dynamic Cone Penetrometer (DCP) test, gear configuration, contact pressure and as well as the wheel spacing. The settlement profile along the Runway Strip are able to be produced and this can be a tool to the airport authority in executing their annual preventive maintenance programme. From the results and analysis done on previous chapters, it is found that the lower CBR values does affect the settlement values to be this highest but it is concluded that among the 3 sets of aircraft weights. In addition, configuration gear in terms of arrangement number of wheels at one axle also contributing the settlement values to be in such variations. This proved by DCP testing results is showing some location with tremendously low values in CBR after calculated. this paper providing layer projection more than 15cm in terms of displacement(cm) compared to as conventionally suggest by ICAO that only suggest strength verification testing and solely depends on CBR values.