Dynamic response analyses of snow-melting airport rigid pavement under different types of moving loads

Most of current research assumes that airport rigid pavement suffers a constant moving load. However, moving aircraft load is more complicated, and the dynamic response of airport rigid pavement is significantly affected by taxiing speed and unevenness of pavement. In this paper, based on a full-scale snow-melting test platform constructed in Harbin Institute of Technology, a corresponding three-dimensional finite element model was developed by employing ABAQUS version 6.12. The presented model was validated by conducting the falling weight deflectometer test on the platform, and it was applied to simulate and predict the dynamic responses of snow-melting airport rigid pavement under movable invariable loads and movable non-uniform loads. The results indicated that the dynamic response was significantly affected by taxiing speed when considering a taxiing lift effect and vibration effect. Compared to movable invariable loads suffered on the pavement, snow-melting airport rigid pavement showed different dynamic responses under movable non-uniform loads; in particularly, when the taxiing speed reached 25 m/s, a sharp reduction in each stress was found due to a huge lift force and vibration effect. The authors concluded that taxiing lift and vibration effect should be emphasised in the dynamic response analysis of airport rigid pavement, movable non-uniform aircraft loads with slow taxiing speeds should be considered as the unfavourable loads and aircraft moving loads with high taxiing speeds could be ignored in airport rigid pavement design.