Evolution of French Airport Bearing Capacity Assessment

The paper describes the French method of airport bearing capacity assessment in use for 25 years and its further evolution. This method requires a bearing capacity device designed for non-destructive testing and developed by STBA (Service Technique des Bases Aeriennes). It consists in a trailer, a monitoring cabin, a 40 cu.m container providing until 60t, an hydraulic jack, a plate, a reference beam, vertical deformation and horizontal elongation gauges. The pavement is subjected to loading-unloading cycles of the test plate at increasing forces approaching the allowable load. Each test lasts about 30 minutes and an airport needs 2 to 4 weeks of evaluation. Because of increasing traffic, this evaluation is more and more difficult to implement on major airports. It is why STBA is developing a new device to measure deflection under aeronautical load. This device will provide continuous measures at low speed and allow determination of homogeneous sections of pavements. For the covering abstract see ITRD E118503.