Advances in FAA Pavement Thickness Design Software: FAARFIELD 1.41

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has introduced the first major changes to its FAARFIELD standard pavement design software since the last version was released in 2010. These program upgrades accompanied a thorough revision of Advisory Circular (AC) 150/5320-6 covering airport pavement design and evaluation. The newly released program, designated FAARFIELD 1.4, includes significant modifications to both rigid pavement and flexible pavement design models, and adds new features to improve the user experience. This paper summarizes the principal technical changes to structural models, failure models and design logic that affect thickness design using FAARFIELD. It is shown by examples that designs performed using FAARFIELD 1.4 typically are less conservative than in the previous version (FAARFIELD 1.3); however, exceptions to this general statement may be found. This paper also includes discussion of programming changes implemented in the FAARFIELD overlay design procedures that improve both speed and accuracy.