Study of Airplanes Annual Departure Effects on Design Airfield Thickness Using FAARFIELD Program

Aircraft annual departure is one of the most important parameters used in the design and evaluation of runway performance. The selection of the annual departure by the critical aircraft with high impact plays a major role in determining the thickness of the runway layers. In this research, the annual departure was tested for several landing configurations of design aircraft according to the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It was found that increasing the annual departure by values ranging from (10,000-20,000) for all landing configurations for design aircraft leads to a change of 3% to 4% in the total thickness value of the runway pavement layers . For the same annual departure The study found that the required thickness in the case of the aircraft with a triple tandem configuration aircraft (B-777-200C) is four times the required thickness for the double dual tandem configuration aircraft (B747-200) , 1.2 times for the dual tandem configuration aircraft (B767-200) , 1.25 times that of dual configuration aircraft (B737-200) and 2.4 times the required thickness for the single-axle configuration aircraft (SW-60). This requires choosing the aircraft with a triple tandem configuration (B-777-200C) as the design aircraft due to its significant impact on the design thickness regardless of the amount of annual departure.