Prototype of the Runway Monitoring Process at Smaller Airports: Edvard Rusjan Airport Maribor

Abstract

The last 20-year announcement predicts a 3.5% increase in the number of yearly passengers which will result in the doubling of the number of passengers in air transport by 2037. Such anticipation indicates the need for efficient monitoring of airport infrastructure as the support of opportune and efficient maintenance works. The novelties of this article are a process model of maintenance and monitoring, suitable for smaller and less burdened airports, and the methodology of monitoring of runways by implementation of the geodetic and geomechanics falling weight deflectometer (FWD) method. In addition, the results confirm the assumption that a specific environment such as an airport allows for sufficiently reliable determination of deformation areas or areas of vertical deviations of runways in a relative short time period available for measurements by using geodetic methods only or by combining other methods; our research model includes the FWD method. With the research, we have also shown there is an interaction between deformations or areas of vertical deviations on the surface and anomalies in the runway lower constructure which will, hereinafter, allow the development of the prediction, creating a vertical deviations or deformation model.