Estimating Remaining Life of Airfield Pavements

Currently, there is no universally accepted procedure or approach to performing remaining life analyses for airfield pavements. However, there are several methods that have been employed to estimate the remaining life of airfield pavements, each with advantages and limitations. Airport managers and engineers understand the importance and significance of this concept, and are increasingly interested in seeing reported some measure of remaining life as a part of pavement management and evaluation projects. This paper describes in detail several different approaches that are used to estimate the remaining life of airfield pavements (both bituminous- and concrete-surfaced). These include a design-based or traffic-based approach, a PCI approach, and a mechanistic-empirical analysis approach. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are discussed. Although it is acknowledged that estimating remaining life is not an exact science, and that the chances of obtaining the same result from different approaches is slight, the information obtained from such analyses is extremely useful as part of an overall evaluation of an airport's pavements, as well as in planning and programming pavement rehabilitation activities.