Prediction of water film depth on grooved airport runway induced by intense rainfall and wind

The runway water film depth (WFD) and its drainage have direct impact on hydroplaning risk and, consequently, aircraft operational safety. Understanding its relationship with weather and runway conditions can help manage such risk due to WFD. Thus, this study develops an empirical formula to correlate runway risk area with its influencing factors using a dataset generated by a comprehensive rainfall-runoff dynamic model. The model incorporates a wind speed induced stress and is validated with physical experiment collected data. The simulation and observation showed good agreement, verifying the model's capability to reasonably well simulate the WFD distribution on intricate grooved surfaces at the millimetre level, with the consideration of wind effects. Then, this study performs 456 numerical experiments at the lateral prototype scale considering various rainfall intensity, wind speed, runway deterioration area, and groove depth. The impact of these factors on the peak WFD and the runway risk area is quantitatively analysed. The proposed empirical formula and developed dynamic model enables accurate assessment and prediction of the runway risk area under extreme weather conditions for better management of potential hydroplaning.