United States Department of Transportation
i
Small Unmanned Aircraft System for Pavement Inspection
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2023-08-07
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[PDF-28.89 MB]
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Airport pavements require routine maintenance, upgrading, and rehabilitation to reach or exceed their design period. While pavement distresses caused by environmental conditions cannot be prevented, early and routine maintenance work can minimize the deterioration. The current practice for airport pavement inspections relies on time-consuming visual surveys and manual interpretation of reports and sketches prepared by inspectors in the field. Recently, the use of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) has attracted attention as an option for performing cost-effective and efficient pavement inspections. In this study, the research team deployed several sUAS at different altitudes at six airports in Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and New Jersey from December 2020 to November 2021. Red, green, and blue (RGB) optical orthophotos, Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), hillshades from DEMs, and thermal orthophotos collected using several sUAS at different altitudes were analyzed for their usefulness in airfield distress detection. The results showed that RGB optical data could detect as many as 13 Portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement distresses out of 14 available in this study and 6 out of 9 asphalt concrete (AC) pavement distresses available on the airports. Similarly, DEMs were found to be useful for confirming the location of distresses with elevation change, such as faulting in PCC pavement and shoving in AC pavement. In addition, thermal orthophotos showed potential to detect crack-based distresses. Based on the data analysis, RGB orthophoto resolution of 1.5 millimeters per pixel (mm/pix), DEM resolution of 6 mm/pix, and thermal orthophoto resolution of 30 mm/pix or higher were recommended for airfield pavement distress detection and rating. This research also concluded that sUAS-based PCI inspection not only detects and rates a number of airfield pavement distresses, but also provides PCI values close to the foot-on-ground traditional PCI inspection value. Recommendations on sUAS data collection plan development, safe and efficient data collection, data processing, data analysis, and the process of incorporating sUAS-based PCI inspection to complement traditional PCI inspections are discussed in detail.
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