Runway 16/34 evaluation for Dublin Airport

In 2013, Dublin Airport Authority commissioned an AECOM/Fjori partnership to carry out of PCN evaluation of its secondary runway 16/34 and link taxiways crossings. The airport also required Fjori to consider the effects of future heavier aircraft operating from the airport, including the B787 Dreamliner.

  • Dublin Airport Authority
  • AECOM / Fjori Ltd
  • Dublin, Ireland
  • 2013
  • Pavement Classification Number (PCN) evaluation
  • Pavement Condition Index (PCI) assessment
  • Residual Life Analysis
  • Outline airfield pavement rehabilitation and strengthening recommendations
  • Airfield pavement inspection
  • Airfield works phasing review
  • Runway 16/34 is the secondary runway at DUB, but has a number of heavily trafficked taxiway crossings. This meant that the residual life analysis required to be zoned due to the very different traffic intensities along the length of the runway.
  • The runway acts as both a runway and taxiway, meaning that channelised traffic in key locations was a critical consideration.
  • The pavement inspections included the first use of the Laser Crack Measurement System (LCMS) on a runway in Europe. This system allowed rapid data collection in short survey possession times.

The runway contains a number of heavily trafficked crossings for which Fjori generated a complex trafficking model in order to be able to review the likely effects on residual life. The pavement evaluation utilised data from a series of non-destructive surveys including Heavy Weight Deflectometer (HWD) to assess pavement layer stiffness, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to provide a continuous plot of pavement layer depth and Laser Crack Management System (LCMS) to provide a comprehensive data set for defects and cracking.

The use of the vehicle mounted LCMS for data collection from the runway was the first use of this device on any runway in Europe. Notwithstanding the comprehensive nature of data collection, one principal advantage of adopting the LCMS was the short windows of time available for surveys on this runway at DUB. LCMS can retrieve data even at nighttime, when visual surveys by floodlight would otherwise become very inaccurate. This is highly beneficial on areas such as runways.