Book Description

This investigation was conducted to determine the optimum panel size for the AM2 mat fabricated by Harvey Aluminum Company, Torrance, Calif. The basic AM2 mat was designed to sustain 1600 operational cycles of an aircraft having a gross weight of 60,000 lb with a single-wheel main-gear-assembly load of 27,000 lb and a 30-7.7 tire inflated to 400 psi. A test section consisting of three items with different subgrade strengths and surfaced with three different size mat panels was constructed and subjected to 188 coverages (equivalent to 1600 cycles of aircraft operations) of accelerated traffic of a 27,000-lb single-wheel load with a 30-7.7 tire inflated to 400 pri. The mat was also tested for its ability to sustain 1600 passes of a 39,000-lb single-wheel load applied in a single track to represent the calculated loading that would be imposed on a landing mat during launching of a 60,000-lb aircraft by catapult.