Study on improvement of design method for airport flexible pavement in Vietnam

Abstract

Presently, there are 22 airports in operation comprising of 9 international airports and 13 domestic airports in Vietnam. According to the master plan of airports national wide, there are 124 airports and aerodromes both civil airports and military airfield. Design of airport flexible pavement is an important step during design the airport runway and taxi. Currently airport flexible pavement in Vietnam designs based on Vietnamese national standards, American standards and Russian standards. However, these standards have some issues such as design load, effect depth of the aircraft load, relative deflection caused by the aircraft and critical relative deflection. Therefore, this research points out improper issues that is not compatible with current practices of increase in airplane total weight. It also clarifies unfavorable effects of existing flexible pavement design method to the performance of runway pavement in some airports in Vietnam. Some technical measures are proposed for improvement of the current flexible pavement design standards and specifications are also recommended.