An airport sod surface is a ground surface, covered with a layer of developed grass vegetation, adapted to handle flight operations. These are the basic surfaces at low class airports. At airports of higher technical classes, natural surfaces appear on the runway strip in the area of the runway shoulders and the runway end safety areas. They are designed to protect aircraft from damage in the event of an emergency exit from the runway.
Airport facilities often encounter the issue of inadequate load-bearing capacity of natural surfaces, which directly affects the safety of flight operations conducted by military and civil aircraft. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the load-bearing capacity of natural airfield pavements in Poland. The studies show that a large part of natural airport pavements is neglected or improperly designed, which does not meet the requirements in terms of load capacity.
The article presents a proposal to reinforce a natural airport pavement using cellular geosynthetics. The results of field tests including geotechnical wells, DPL and DCP sounding, as well as static plate load capacity (VSS) and HWD type air deflection analysis were presented.
The results of the preliminary tests confirmed that it was possible to improve the load-bearing capacity of natural surfaces, which is a cumulative effect resulting from the use of geocells, as well as laying the foundation layers of mechanically stabilized aggregate.