An Evaluation of Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Airport Pavement

Abstract

A runway pavement is considered as one of the central facilities in an airport. Ensuring safety for aircraft operations and providing adequate comfort to the passenger are the major features while budgeting the construction cost of a pavement. The target of this research is to render a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) approach for newly designed runway pavements to select the most cost effective pavement. Some particular groups of aircraft traffic from the website of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in a particular day were taken for the analysis. A flexible and a rigid runway pavement were designed considering annual departures and growth rate for the respective aircrafts by using FAARFIELD software. The thickness of flexible and rigid pavement was found about 37 inch and 31.5 inch respectively. As per FAA standard, an analysis period of 20 years was selected. The costs for the both pavements were evaluated for this analysis period by an excel spreadsheet. Initial costs and maintenance costs were incorporated and the result was checked by the FAA method of economic analysis with a recommended discount rate. Comparative results showed that initial construction costs of concrete pavement was higher (about 21%) than the asphalt pavement. However, total life cycle cost of concrete pavements served much lower than that of asphalt pavement at the end of the design period including maintenance and rehabilitation costs in it. In this case, around 4% of costs would be saved if rigid pavement was used instead of flexible pavement.