Late Morning Concurrent Sessions: Innovations in Aviation Technologies: Presentation: Relative Material Loss: A Methodology for Assessing Island Airport Steel Marine Bulkheads

Abstract

Verbatim from Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

A July 2015 report from the Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) states “U.S. airports are long overdue for [a] major structural improvement projects. Most U.S. airports are aging, … and because of budgetary restrictions, they’re not aging well.”(Garcia and Clampet, 2015). The average US age is 40 years old with the youngest (Denver International) recently turning 20 years old. As airports continue to age, airport commissioners will struggle to find creative ways to either fund airport replacements or extend the service life of existing airport facilities (commonly referred to as service life extension projects or SLEP). Due to budgetary constraints, the call for more SLEP projects is expected to increase, driving industries to require more in depth inspection and baseline documentation methodologies (Melchers, 2015). This is especially true for the airport industry where steel marine structures such as cellular cofferdam and steel pile bulkheads are being used for island airport construction and expansion (Myscienceacademy, 2013). The use of these structural marine systems is expected to rise as more airports are constructed off shore to resolve regional urban encroachment and space limitations problems around existing airport facilities. The slide presentation will focus on a methodology called Relative Material Loss (RML) which is a maintenance inspection technique proposed for approximating material loss on in-service island airport marine bulkheads such as cellular cofferdam and sheet pile systems. The modelling technique suggests that by defining numerous relative loss (RL) equations across various structural boundaries and into various defined homogeneously environments, material thinning on both sides of the steel material can be approximated which adds value to determining service life (Ernsting, et al., 2010). When incorporated with scholarly probabilistic corrosion modeling (Melchers, 2015), RML offers a promising frame work for further problem constraint and improving structural assessment knowledge. References Garcia, M., & Clampet, J. (2015, July 29), What Will It Take to Bring U.S. Airports Into the Future? Only $4. Retrieved from www.skift.com. http://skift.com/2015/07/29/what-will-it-take-to-bring-u-s-airports-into-the-future-only-4/ Melchers, R. E. (2015). Using models to interpret data for monitoring and life prediction of deteriorating infrastructure systems. Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 11(1), 63-72. Myscienceacademy. (2013, September 12), 11 Incredible Island Airports. Retrieved from myscienceacademy.org. http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/09/12/11-incredible-island-airports/ Ernsting, R. A., Mazzuchi, T. A., & Sarkani, S. (2010). Relative material Loss—A methodology for approximating material loss on structural plating separating dissimilar marine environments. Paper presented at the Ports 2010. 12th Triannual International Conference. Building on the Past, Respecting the Future,

Authors

• Ernsting, Robert Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Koursaris, Constantine M. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Keywords

• Engineering
• Marine Engineering
• Island Airport
• Relative Material Loss
• Material Loss
• Structural Engineering
• Geotechnical Engineering
• Risk Analysis
• Aviation
• Engineering
• Geotechnical Engineering
• Maintenance Technology