Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport pavement engineers are using a van equipped with infrared lasers and digital imaging technology to inspect the five runway surfaces in about half the time it used to take. The technology, developed at the University of Arkansas, is capable of detecting pavement cracks as little as 1 millimeter wide.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport Specially equipped van maps surface of Atlanta runways to 1 mm.

Quintin Watkins, airport airside manager, brought the technology over from the university where he earned his engineering degree in 2001. Kelvin Wang, his professor, is a key researcher of the mapping technology and also operates the commercial provider, WayLink Systems Corp., Fayetteville, Ark.

The system works with a Digital Highway Data Vehicle (DHDV) equipped with infrared lasers that travels down a runway taking high-resolution images of the pavement. Ten years ago, digital images were obtained by strobe cameras that needed several thousand watts of power, says Wang. “Two years ago we switched to infrared lasers, and that consumes 200 watts. We have seen a quantum leap regarding image quality and functionality.” Lasers can map pavement at any time of day or night, which is useful for runways at a busy airport.

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When Watkins began working at Hartsfield, first as a consultant and then as the airfield manager in 2001, pavement inspection “was a paper exercise with some nondestructive testing,” he recalls. With only 12 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. timeframes, a crew of three might take four nights to walk the runways. With the DHDV, “we can knock it out in two nights,” he says.

A single image is about 13 ft x 6.5 ft. Images are combined to provide a complete overview of a particular runway section. In 2001, Wang says it took seven discs to store information for one runway. “In two years,we’ll be able to fit all five runways into a flash drive” thanks to evolving software, he says. “Users can click on a slab, and its details will show up to 1 mm.”

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport

System costs begin at about $500,000, including the vehicle, basic software, lasers, global-positioning software and cameras. Other clients include highway agencies in China, Kuwait, Denmark and South Africa, as well as the city of Los Angeles and the Louisiana Transportation Research Center.

“DHDV gives us the opportunity to go out and get an accurate picture while traveling at 55 miles an hour,” says Kevin J. Gaspard, LTRC’s senior pavement research engineer. “Before, we had to send a team out with pencils and pads to draw each stress, transfer them into electronic format, then build out the stress curves.” Now the team can survey a road without being exposed to traffic while on foot and avoid human error.

DHDV addresses surface integrity but not vertical faults or smoothness. Veteran Hartsfield engineer Frank Hayes cautions that “eyeballing” surveys, pavement core samples and other tests are still vital. But the system creates a reliable database. “If your personnel changes, the new person can pull up the images and see what the runway looked like five, 10 years ago,” and determine the historical rate of deterioration, says Watkins.