Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 16, 2026

Determination of the Friction Coefficients of Icy Pavements Under Different Amounts of Snowfall
Published on: January 6, 2023
Use of Terrestrial Laser Scanner for Rigid Airport Pavement Management
Maurizio Barbarella1, Fabrizio D'Amico2, Maria Rosaria De Blasiis3
1Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering-Advanced Research Center on Electronic Systems, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy. maurizio.barbarella@unibo.it.
Abstract:
The evaluation of the structural efficiency of airport infrastructures is a complex task. Faulting is one of the most important indicators of rigid pavement performance. The aim of our study is to provide a new method for faulting detection and computation on jointed concrete pavements. Nowadays, the assessment of faulting is performed with the use of laborious and time-consuming measurements that strongly hinder aircraft traffic. We proposed a field procedure for Terrestrial Laser Scanner data acquisition and a computation flow chart in order to identify and quantify the fault size at each joint of apron slabs. The total point cloud has been used to compute the least square plane fitting those points. The best-fit plane for each slab has been computed too. The attitude of each slab plane with respect to both the adjacent ones and the apron reference plane has been determined by the normal vectors to the surfaces. Faulting has been evaluated as the difference in elevation between the slab planes along chosen sections. For a more accurate evaluation of the faulting value, we have then considered a few strips of data covering rectangular areas of different sizes across the joints. The accuracy of the estimated quantities has been computed too.
Related Concept Videos
Design Example: Joints in Concrete Pavements
Contraction joints are typically formed by sawing a groove into the concrete shortly after it has hardened. This creates a weakened vertical plane, deliberately encouraging cracking at...
Rigid Body Equilibrium Problems - I
Rigid Body Equilibrium Problems - II
Consider two children sitting on a seesaw, which has negligible mass. The first child has a mass (m1) of 26 kg and sits at point A, which is 1.6 meters (r1) from the pivot point B; the second child has a mass (m2) of 32 kg and sits at point C. How far from the pivot point B should the second child sit (r2) to balance the seesaw?
Angular Momentum: Rigid Body
This calculation can get complicated when tiny particles within the rigid body are not rotating in the same plane but have...
Virtual Work for a System of Connected Rigid Bodies
Next,...
Kinetic Energy for a Rigid Body

