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Expedient Airfield Runway Repair Using Folded Fiberglass Mat, Christopher Tuan, William Dass

Christopher Y. Tuan

For expedient airfield runway repair, the US Air Force has developed a folded fibreglass mat to cover craters repaired with a well-compacted granular base material. The objective of this study was to evaluate the adequacy of using polymer plugs to anchor the mat to a repaired asphalt pavement for heavy aircraft operations. The effort consisted of materials testing, field experiments and analytical modelling. An 89,800-kg (198,000-pound) load cart having the footprint of a single C-5 main gear was pulled on a mat with wheels locked to simulate full braking forces. Anchor bushings were instrumented to measure anchor loads. A simplified …