• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.21-25
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• 2009

The results of a recent case study for material characterizations and structural evaluation to design asphalt overlay thickness of William P Hobby airport in Houston, Texas are presented herein. The existing runway 12R-30L of Hobby airport consisted of thick asphalt overlay over Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) and the localized surface shoving as evident in the closure of surface groove has been observed recently. Using the field cored asphalt concrete mixtures, measurements of percent air voids, asphalt content and aggregate gradation were conducted to find out the causations of surface shoving and groove closure. The FAA layered elastic program, LEDFAA was utilized to evaluate pavement structural conditions for new asphalt overlay. Two different composition assumptions for existing pavement were made to evaluate the pavement as followings: 1) APC, Asphalt Concrete Overlay over PCC pavement and 2) AC, Asphalt Concrete pavement. Based on laboratory testing results, a ratio of percent passing #200 to asphalt content ranged 1.1 to 2.2, which is considered a high ratio and a tendency of tender mix design was observed. Thus, the localized surface shoving and groove closure of the runway 12R-30L could be attributed to the use of excessive fine contents and tender mix design. Based on the structural evaluation results, it was ascertained that the analysis assuming the pavement structure as AC pavement gives more realistic structural life when the asphalt overlay is thicker enough compared to PCC layer because the existing PCC pavement under asphalt overlay acts more like a high quality base material.