Some remarks on landing kinematic characteristics of aircrafts

Runway pavement design and maintenance are a demanding task nowadays. Mechanistic and empirical mechanistic approaches require a more accurate assessment of actions exerted by aircraft landing gears. Therefore the evaluation of aircraft positioning on runway appears fundamental. Following an experimental investigation carried out on an Italian airport, aircraft kinematic data have been collected using several video cameras. Landing and take-off procedures have been reviewed and statistical analysis has been performed to model touchdown point longitudinal and transversal distribution. Preliminary comparison with data derived by technical literature has shown a good agreement; conversely, a new stochastic model is proposed for the transversal distribution of aircrafts’ paths. Although the experimental study has to be extended, a significant relationship between real landing distance and mean deceleration has been derived and the monitoring methodology proposed appears to be effective in providing useful data for runway pavement design or the development of degradation models.