Effect of temperature-induced load on airport concrete pavement behavior

In many countries, airport pavements are designed according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Rigid and Flexible Iterative Elastic Layer Design (FAARFIELD) program. FAARFIELD is capable of analyzing airport pavement behavior based on both the layered elastic-based and three-dimensional finite-element-based design methods. Although the FAA design methods accommodate the mechanical principles needed to calculate the slab thickness required for a given aircraft fleet mix, the effect of temperature-induced loading on the concrete pavement behavior is not considered. This paper presents the tensile stress distribution of concrete slabs and the landing gear position where the maximum tensile stress is observed when both load-induced and temperature-induced loads are taken into consideration in the analysis. Based on three-dimensional finite element analyses, it was observed that the distress types and locations coincided with the actual distress types and locations that are typically found in the field when both traffic-induced and temperature-induced loadings were considered in the analysis.