Study of airplanes annual departure effects on design airfield thickness using FAARFIELD program

Abstract

Due to the development of aircraft types and quantities, one of the most important parameters affecting the design thickness of the airport runway is the annual departure of aircraft. In this research, the design thickness of the flexible pavement of the runway was studied to evaluate the importance of the annual departure of the design aircraft with different maim gears assembly configurations. A case study is conducted with fixed parameters such as pavement materials, aircraft data and soil conditions. The results of the FAARFIELD program showed that the triple tandem design aircraft configuration (B-777-200c) requires a large thickness of the runway layers compared to the other configurations, which makes it the most critical design aircraft. The effect of increasing the annual departure from (10000-20000) on the thickness of the runway layers in terms of the design aircraft ranges between 3.7% and 4% for all the studied configurations, which is a slight effect compared to the effect of the weight and type of aircraft and the bearing of the layers used in the construction of the runway.