It will change the way we design pavements. The test machine will be fully enclosed with pavement test sections built using conventional construction equipment and techniques to replicate actual field construction. Testing will be conducted year-round 24 hours a day and in a fully automated mode. The pavement test section is about 900 feet by 60 feet, allowing for the simultaneous testing of nine different pavement cross sections. Simulated aircraft loading will be applied with an electrically driven vehicle operated on railroad rails.
Hydraulic actuators provide the desired wheel loads.
Movable wheel modules allow the wheel groups to be moved up to 20 feet in any direction. Current airport pavement construction procedures are based on highway pavement test data nearly 30 years old, Agrawal says. That is the pavement design that must be used when there is a 777 in the traffic mix at a given airport. We would certainly like to provide a pavement testing tool that is based on sound considerations and full-scale testing. The machine also will be able to test for pavement loads that exceed the expected gross weight of the new generation of widebody aircraft, which likely will be double-deckers weighing in at more than 1.2 million pounds.