Critical groove depth and width for maintenance management of runway pavements

Groove deterioration and accumulation of surface contaminants have the negative effect of reducing groove depth and width. Reduced depths and/or widths of grooves in a runway pavement would adversely affect its safety functions. Currently, no mechanistic solutions are available to quantitatively evaluate the effect of groove depth and width on the safety effectiveness of a grooved pavement against skidding and hydroplaning. This study developed a finite-element procedure to provide a mechanistic solution to the dynamic tire-pavement skid resistance problem, and calculate the skid resistance and hydroplaning speed of grooved pavement. Based on the standard FAA square grooves, analyses were presented in this paper to analyze the impacts of groove deterioration on the skid resistance and hydroplaning speed for a B777 aircraft. The analyses offered insights into the variations of skid resistance and hydroplaning speed with groove dimensions, and provided supporting results to the minimum 3 mm groove depth and width recommendation by FAA for runway pavements. The solution offers a useful tool to quantify the reduced safety margins of deteriorated grooves with shallow depths and widths. It can be applied to analyze the safety impacts of changes in the dimensions of any runway pavement groove configuration.