Structural Evaluation of a Pre-stressed Concrete Airport Pavement

Abstract

This paper concerns the assessment of the bearing capacity of a pre-stressed concrete airport pavement built in the 60’s, using non-destructive tests complemented with a number of other in-situ and laboratory tests aiming at the characterisation of the stress state in the concrete slab 40 years after construction. The work performed comprised visual inspection, FWD tests, core drilling and site investigation, “small flat jack” tests (normally used in rock mechanics), as well as the characterisation of the in situ stress condition of the pre-stressing wires. A finite element computer program was used, together with multi-layer computer programs, for modelling the pavement, taking into account different friction conditions at the interface between the concrete slab and the soil-cement sub-base. The paper describes the methodology used in the study and presents some of the results achieved.