ABSTRACT
The paper describes the French method of airport bearing capacity assessment in use for 25 years and its further evolution. This method requires a bearing capacity device designed for non-destructive testing and developed by STBA (Service Technique des Bases Aériennes). It consists in a trailer, a monitoring cabin, a 40 m3 container providing until 601, an hydraulic jack, a plate, a reference beam, vertical deformation and horizontal elongation gauges. The pavement is subjected to loading-unloading cycles of the test plate at increasing forces approaching the allowable load. Each test lasts about 30 minutes and an airport needs 2 to 4 weeks of evaluation. Because of increasing traffic, this evaluation is more and more difficult to implement on major airports. It is why STBA is developing a new device to measure deflection under aeronautical load. This device will provide continuous measures at low speed and allow determination of homogeneous sections of pavements.
