Photo: COWI

Civil engineering, airports 

Airport civil engineering comprises design, tendering, contracting and supervision services in connection with runways, taxiways, aprons and landside access facilities.

The design of airport civil works requires the knowledge of pavement specialists due to the extreme loads that the pavement is exposed to from the heavy aircraft in different climatic conditions ranging from extreme cold weather in the arctic to hot weather in the tropics. At the same time, certain parts of the pavement are exposed to fully loaded aircraft at slow speed and other parts only to occasional passes of service vehicles.

Geometrical design

COWI employs software showing the path of all parts of different types of aircraft enabling us to secure that all requirements of ICAO will be met when designing runways, taxiways and aprons. In order to accommodate different aircraft mixes, flexible aircraft stands have been introduced to minimise the length of building facades and thereby to reduce initial and future cost.
Photo: COWI
Sofia International Airport, Bulgaria

Pavement design

COWI employs modern pavement designs using both externally and in-house developed software in order to cater for

different climatic and loading conditions. We employ new technologies such as the recycling of asphalt and concrete pavements when existing airfield pavement is rehabilitated. These technologies result in savings of 20-40 percent compared to traditional rehabilitation methods.

  • Performance-driven specifications, e.g.
    superpave
  • Pavement analysis and modelling
  • Utilisation of waste and marginal materials
  • Specialised binders