Index of Foreign Object Damage in Airfield Pavement Management

Control of foreign object damage (FOD) on airfield pavements is critical to the safety of aircraft operations. An index was developed to identify the FOD potential caused by deterioration of airfield pavements and was incorporated in airport pavement management systems. However, current pavement maintenance policies are determined mainly by the pavement condition index (PCI). This study investigates if the current practice of PCI-based pavement maintenance plans is able to address the maintenance required to reduce and contain FOD. This study includes 27.1 million square feet of airfield pavement at a commercial and a general aviation airport. It was observed that, in general, PCI-based pavement maintenance plans can accommodate the maintenance requirements triggered by FOD-related distresses. An innovative normalized PCI-FOD system was developed to identify efficiently sections that may be overlooked. It was determined that some pavement sections may require maintenance on the basis of FOD potential only although they have acceptable PCI values.