Pavement maintenance management for airports

Runways, taxiways, and aprons are made of asphalt or concrete pavementsin airports. Pavements must be in proper conditions for the safety ofaircrafts. Most of the military airports in Turkey are built by using theNATO budget. The service lives of flexible (asphalt) and rigid (concrete)pavements are respectively 15 and 25 years. The rehabilitation costs are notpermitted for asphalt and concrete pavements before respectively 10 and 12years, in NATO. In Turkey, the service lives of asphalt and concretepavements are about respectively 15 and 10 years. Turkish Air Forces wouldhave economic advantages by increasing the service lives of pavements andhuman lives would be saved by decreasing the number of aircraft accidentswith safer pavements. While defining the reasons of the problems andsolutions to them, the ideas and advises of experienced technical personsfrom both public and private sector are taken, literature about the subject isexamined, and applications of American military are compared by Turkishapplications. The main reasons of the short service lives of pavements arefound to be, lack of experienced technical persons, lack of enoughknowledge, maintenance applications which are in contradiction withinternational methods and applications, and lack of a unique maintenancesystem. In this thesis work, the surface failure of pavements and repairoptions are explained, a maintenance system is developed for the use ofPavement Condition Index method used in NATO countries. Thesis work isprepared as a handbook for the technical persons working on pavements.