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 creep speed and other parts only to occasional passes of service vehicles.
COWI uses programs showing the path of all parts of different types of aircraft enabling us to secure that all requirements of ICAO and FAA will be met, when designing runways, taxiways and apron. In order to accommodate different aircraft mixes flexible aircraft stands has been introduced in order to minimise the length of building facades and thereby reduce cost now and in the future.
COWI applies modern pavement designs using both externally and in-house developed programs in order to cater for different climatic and loading conditions. We use new technologies such as recycling of asphalt and concrete pavements when existing airfield pavement is rehabilitated, giving savings of 20 - 40 % compared to traditional rehabilitation methods.