Impact statement: This experimental and analytical research advances science and technology in making rut resistant airport pavement structures to heavy aircraft loading.

This research focuses on studying the deterioration behavior of airport pavement granular layers through improved testing and modeling. The measured performances of full-scale flexible pavement test sections provide the field database. The work areas consist of sampling and advanced laboratory testing of granular base/subbase aggregates, determining the most damaging field stress states affecting aggregate performance, development of material characterization and laboratory performance based models, and finally, based on laboratory performance based evaluation, development of specifications for field construction and compaction of unbound granular layers.