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The Airports of Thailand Public Company Limited recently invited experts from AIT to assist in an independent study to investigate the cause of the Suvarnabhumi Airport’s pavement cracks. The AIT team consisted of Prof. Dennes Bergado (Ground Improvement and Geosynthetics) as team leader, Prof. Tawatchai Tingsanchali (Water Eng'g), Dr. Kunnawee Kanitpong (Asphalt Pavement) and Dr. Bonaventura H. W. Hadikusumo (Construction Management).
The investigating team, on 2 February 2007, submitted the preliminary proposal consisting of over 100 pages for the investigations of the pavement cracks in the Suvarnabhumi Airport. As requested by the Airports of Thailand (AOT), this proposal was submitted in the name of AIT together with the institute’s collaborators consisting of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok (KMITNB), Kasetsart University (KU) as well as two Foreign Experts in Airport Pavement Design.
The investigating team tend to believe that the occurrences of airport pavement damages are limited to the surface pavement structure. Thus, the team’s approach of investigations are concentrated to the uppermost five meters of the soil profile which includes the AC pavement components together with their underlying supporting layers such as the cement treated base (CTB), sand sub-base and the subgrade. Furthermore, the team proposed to indentify the causes of pavement failures and subsequently recommend remedial measures.