Airfield Pavement Overloading and Current Practice

Airfield pavements are one of the most important airport assets. Among them, fundamental function is the ability to provide sufficient load-carrying capacity of the expected traffic, which helps to ensure the uninterrupted operation of airport facilities. However, several airfield pavements often face the challenge of either serving aircraft types that have not been considered during the initial pavement design, or aircraft, although considered during the design, but exhibiting more operations than the ones foreseen. In these cases, the current airfield pavement overloading ICAO guidance is usually implemented. With this in mind, the present paper aims to make an interpretation of the current practical overloading criterion, through the implementation of recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airfield pavement evaluation techniques. The analysis indicated that there may be a significant impact on pavement damage due to overloading, which must be considered when overloading practices are implemented.