Release of the French Technical Guidance for Flexible Airfield Pavement Assessment Using HWD

This paper presents the technical guidance released in 2014 by the STAC (Service Technique de l’Aviation Civile : French Civil Aviation Technical Center), relative to Flexible Airfield Pavement Assessment using Heavy Weight Deflectometer (HWD) which aims at providing all airport technical managers with a methodology for pavement testing using HWD. It gathers recommendations relative to operational survey and data analysis, based on an advanced dynamic modeling which overcomes the limitations encountered with the usual static analysis methods. The operational recommendations include all information about airport platform survey and the carrying out of the tests whereas the recommendations relative to the data analysis gather the description of the mechanical modeling and its parameters, as well as the one of the associated backcalculation process developed. All parts of the guide have been validated, numerically or using in-situ measurements. The last part of the document is dedicated to illustrations through real case studies. This paper describes the content of this guide and particularly points out the new main developments compared with usual HWD test protocols and analysis methods.