Design of Proof Rolling Regimes for Heavy Duty Aircraft Pavements

Abstract

Proof rolling of aircraft pavements is an Australian practice that is designed to reveal pavement layer deficiencies prior to the construction of the next pavement layer. There are a number of heavy pneumatic-tyred proof rollers available in Australia for this purpose. These rollers are predominantly owned by the Department of Defence and made available to airfield constructors, on a project-by-project basis. The selection of rollers and the design of proof rolling regimes should utilise the stress with depth calculation function of layered elastic design tools such as APSDS. Proof rolling regimes can be determined by comparison of aircraft and roller induced plots of the damage indicator with depth. The traditional use of Boussinesq’s equation for simple load stress with depth in a single elastic layer is also viable for many practical applications. Strain and deflection could also be used as the damage indicator but stress is the most effective as the pavement structure, subgrade strength and location of the damage indicator have little effect on the calculated stresses. A single layer representation of the pavement is also adequate. More specific cases, where the absolute values of the damage indicator are required or where non-typical pavements are to be designed, a customised pavement structure may be justifiable for the roller and aircraft induced stress calculations.