Evaluation of Rutting Performance on Thin Asphalt Pavements Using a Dual-Wheel Aircraft Gear for Low-Volume Aircraft Operations

A series of full-scale relatively thin flexible pavements were constructed to evaluate pavement rutting performance under accelerated traffic with a heavily-loaded dual wheel aircraft test gear. The pavement had varying asphalt concrete layer thicknesses, base course strengths, and subgrade strengths that yielded relatively low traffic volumes that would be considered representative of short-term military operations. Although full-scale experiments have been conducted by the military for over 75 years, the loading conditions evaluated for this experiment are unlike previous experiments, namely the application of multiple-wheel loads characterized by both high tire inflation pressure and high wheel loads on relatively thin flexible pavements. Comparisons were made to similarly loaded single-wheel experiments. The data indicated that rutting performance was sensitive to base course strength and that a competent base course was required to sustain a reasonable number of aircraft passes. Pavement rutting performance tended to be sensitive to asphalt concrete layer thickness on a weaker subgrade but less sensitive with an increase in subgrade strength. The dual-wheel aircraft gear configuration was found to be much more damaging, in terms of pavement rutting performance, than a similarly loaded single-wheel gear configuration on similarly constructed pavement layers.