The airport pavement system is a complicated mechanical system, which is composed of the airplane load, pavement and foundation. The research on the parameter identification method for the system is an important category in the aeronautic and transport engineering. Although such topic has already been reported in the literature [1
–3], there are still some dissatisfied respects for the practical applications. In this paper, a numerical method is presented in order to identify the parameters of the airport system.
Firstly, based on the solution of infinite plate under concentrated load, an analytical solution of infinite plate on elastic foundation under multiple wheel load is obtained. Several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the analytical solution. A series of boundary adjust parameter are introduced to deal with the problems of finite plate, in which the load transform capability among different plates and the size of each plate bring obvious effect. By using these boundary adjust parameters, these method can solve the problems of arbitrary finite-size plates such as rectangle or hexagonal plate. Furthermore, these method can be used to evaluate strength of the double-layer pavement by using the equivalent stiffness relation or the approximate formula prevailed in American military engineering.
Secondary, a general method is established to identify the correlative parameters. An optimization algorithm is employed to identify the objective function that is constructed by comparing with the measure displacement curve and computing displacement curve. According this optimization algorithm, we can obtain the thickness, bending rigidity and foundation response modulus conveniently. These parameter will play an important role in evaluating strength of the old pavement.
In order to show the application of the method developed in this paper, an actual airport is investigated. By using this software, the foundation response modulus can be identified convenienttely, and the results show a good agreement with experimental results.