Estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements considering environmental factors

Abstract The mechanistic-empirical analysis approach assumes a fixed environmental condition in estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements, which may introduce some errors with the real situation. This paper investigated the influences of moisture and frost on resilient modulus of subgrade soil and unbound materials, as well as the influences of temperature on modulus and Poisson’s ratio of asphalt mixture. A time-sharing damage accumulation method, which considered the environmental factors in pavement damage calculation, was provided in this research. Based on the method, this paper proposed a methodology to predict the remaining life of in-service airfield flexible pavements, and a case study was conducted using this methodology. The result shows that environmental factors significantly affect the damage calculation of airfield flexible pavements. Besides, it has been found from the case study that the methodology is applicable for estimating the remaining life of airfield flexible pavements. The final result of the case also indicates that the methodology provides a relatively accurate result of the remaining life of in-service airfield flexible pavements.