Results from O’Hare Pavement Demonstration-Validation Study

Deflection gages and Carlson elastic wire strain meters were installed in PCC concrete pavements at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. These instrumented pavements were then loaded with a combination of vibratory NDT and aircraft and strains and deflections in the pavement recorded. Partial results from these tests are presented along with results from a finite element analyses of these pavements and the results compared. Results show reasonably good agreement between measured and calculated deflections but measured strains were significantly less than the calculated values. Significance of these results on design is discussed briefly.