Runway Geometric Design Incorporating Hydroplaning Consideration

An important aspect of airport runway geometric design is ensuring prompt removal of water from the runway to reduce skidding and hydroplaning risks of aircraft operating under wet-weather conditions. However, current airport geometric design methods do not explicitly consider hydroplaning risk, and the adequacy of runway geometric design and the associated drainage system against hydroplaning has not been evaluated. In recognition of the need for a design procedure to ensure safe aircraft operations, a framework for runway geometric design that incorporates hydroplaning consideration was proposed. Runway cross-slope is the main runway geometric element affected by the hydroplaning consideration. The proposed framework involves adding an independent module for hydroplaning risk calculation to determine whether a trial runway geometric design meets the safety requirement against hydroplaning for the selected design rainfall and aircraft traffic. For a trial runway geometric design, taking into account the probabilistic distributions of aircraft characteristics, landing speed, and aircraft wander, the level of hydroplaning risk can be computed by comparing the landing speed at each point on the width of the runway with the corresponding estimated hydroplaning speed. The hydroplaning speed at each point of interest is estimated by using an analytical computer simulation model. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed procedure.