Runway Roughness Characterization by DDS Approach

A new approach called Dynamic Data System (DDS) analysis is proposed as an improved and better method of characterizing the runway roughness. The runway profiles of four airports (Washington National, New York International, La Guardia, and Logan International in Boston) are chosen for the present study and the profile data are analyzed for characterizing the runway roughness. The statistical analyses such as analysis of variance and power spectrum analysis have been presented to show the importance of various wavelengths of runways for large and high-speed aircrafts. The results of spectral moments and geometric parameters show that the New York airport has the smoothest runway among the airports. The new technique can be applied to aid the dynamic response analysis of the aircraft and three track runway profile characterization.