GARFIELD – Green, Accessible and Safe Grassy Airfields. Metrology, Methods and Instrumentation
ORGANIZED BY
Jarosław Pytka
Lublin University of Technology, Poland
ABSTRACT
Airfields with grassy runways are still popular, especially in General Aviation. Grassy runways are very sensitive to atmospheric conditions and their critical parameters may change very rapidly. One of the most challenging problems is the lack of evaluation methods for grass surfaces and an accompanying information system to help pilots perform safe landings and takeoffs on the grass.
This Special Session will be devoted to metrology, methods, and instrumentation for testing and evaluating grassy airfields. This will include aircraft performance measurements, flight and ground testing technology for landing gear and wheel-soil interaction, wheel dynamometer sensor systems, grassy surface modeling and evaluation methods, TDR-method based sensors for monitoring turf moisture content, and LIDAR and other optical methods for runway surface inspection and visualization.
ABOUT THE CONVENER
Jaroslaw Pytka is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Lublin University of Technology in Lublin, Poland. His research interests include terramechanics especially with respect to airfield performance of light airplanes on unsurfaced (grassy, snow-covered) runways. He is a member of the AIAA, SAE, AOPA, and EAA.
