An Innovative Cellular Automata Technique for Mapping Cracking Pattern of Airport Pavement

In this study, an innovative cellular automata (CA) technique was proposed for mapping cracking pattern of the airport pavement. The CA technique was developed to establish a numerical model describing the effect of boundary condition of pavement on zones (CA cells) within the pavement. A state function was used to describe the state values in the cells within the CA lattice. The correction coefficient principle is used as the criterion of zone similarity and the corresponding technique is proposed to find similar zones within and between pavements. Three pavement models, HRS, MRS and LRS, tested in FAA, USA, are set as the base pavements to map the cracking patterns of pavements with different sizes from the base pavements. The mapped cracking patterns of unseen pavements are empirically verified by referring to the relative experimental models.