Since airports instituted all-weather aircraft operations, landing and aborted takeoff incidents or accidents have occurred every winter due to slippery and icy conditions on aprons, taxiways, and runways. In addition to the winter maintenance issues caused by the presence of ice and snow on pavement surfaces, water penetration into concrete surface causes durability-related problems. To address these issues, the need to develop new technologies that can more effectively and efficiently remove or prevent the formation of ice and snow on concrete paved surfaces is imperative. In the context of developing new technologies to achieve snow- and icefree concrete pavement systems, this research study was conducted in two parts: (1) the development of self-heating electrically conductive concrete (ECON) (Volume I), and (2) the development of a superhydrophobic concrete surfaces (Volume II). This report, Volume II, presents the findings of the latter part of this study. For this report, a comprehensive literature review and a set of laboratory experimental investigations were conducted to explore the fundamental properties (i.e., the wettability and tribological behavior) required for airport pavement application using candidate superhydrophobic materials, the development and evaluation of superhydrophobic concrete surfaces as a proof-of-concept demonstration, and the effect of conventional deicing chemicals on superhydrophobic concrete surfaces. A superhydrophobic concrete surface was engineered using low surface energy materials and demonstrated a successful proof-of-concept on achieving water- and ice-repellent surfaces with the potential to mitigate winter maintenance issues on airfield areas. The superhydrophobic concrete surface developed in this study can be employed as an additional defense mechanism against icing for heated pavement systems, such as hydronic, conductive concrete/asphalt, phase change materials, etc., and may reduce the amount of electrical power required for these heated pavement technologies to melt ice and snow away in the context of hybrid heated airport concrete pavement system concept.

DOT/FAA/TC-21/55 Authors Ali Arabzadeh, Therin Young, Halil Ceylan, Sriram Sundararajan, Sunghwan Kim, Kasthurirangan Gopalakrishnan, and Alireza Sassani