ABSTRACT
The airport pavement design process has been developed from a nomograph/chart-based empirical procedure to spreadsheet-based design as well as the latest layered elastic analysis and FEM based pavement design method, FAARFIELD 1.4. AC 150/5380-6C gives guidance on the maintenance of airport pavements. The design of airport pavements can be done with airfield pavement design software following the Advisory Circular AC 150/5320-6D. The design process started with the basic shear failure–based California Bearing Ratio (CBR) method developed and modified by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s and 1970s. All airports in countries belonging to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are obligated to report the strength of pavements in terms of a standardized system, known as the ACN-PCN system. The ACN-PCN system is structured so that a pavement with a particular PCN value can support, without weight restrictions, an airplane that has an ACN value equal to or less than the pavement's PCN value.
