The company operating Akureyri Airport planned an extension with the aim of enticing more tourists to Iceland. To this end, the runway and landing strip had to be lengthened and the existing section rehabilitated so that larger aircraft could also land. In a first step, Icelandic contractor Hladbaer-Colas rehabilitated the old runway. Undulating surface irregularities had developed over the years, and height differences of as much as 20cm needed to be levelled out in the course of the rehabilitation work. Hladbaer-Colas decided to use NAVITRONIC Plus®, the VÖGELE System for 3D Machine Control, in order to achieve as level a surface as possible.

With a population of 17,000 inhabitants, Akureyri is Iceland’s fourth largest town and the most important service centrein the north of the country. The numerous wool and fish processing enterprises are of great economic significance. However, Akureyri Airport is not only important for the economy, but also increasingly so for tourism. Therefore, the initial stage of the project involved rehabilitating mthe runway and landing strip, with the extension planned for the year after.

Level regulating layer provides for uniform base

Before the paver’s actual work could commence, a compact WIRTGEN W 350 Cold Milling Machine removed roughly half of the 20cm surface undulations. The paving team then placed a 10cm level regulating layer with their SUPER 1800-2 combined with an AB 500-2 TV Extending Screed. The material used for this layer was open-graded asphalt (0/16) with a binder content of 5.7%.

Hard granite imported from Norway

The level regulating layer was followed by wearing course placed in widths between 4 and 5m. Paving in varying width was done for good reason in order to avoid creating the longitudinal joints of this course right above those of the level regulating layer. For wearing course, too, an open-graded asphalt was used with a grain size of (0/11). The aggregate contained in this mix was granite, which due to its hardness is particularly strong and long-lasting. The granite had been imported from Norway as the rock of the volcanic island, due to its porous nature, is not suited as an aggregate for asphalt paving. Altogether, the Hladbaer-Colas team placed nine strips, always working from the outside in. Each of the 2,000m strips had to be completed in just one day so that the runway could be used for air traffic the following morning.

NAVITRONIC Plus® saves 18km of tensioned wire

As far as surface evenness was concerned, < 3mm were specified in both the longitudinal and the transverse directions, over a distance of 3m. In order to precisely comply with the desired accuracy, Hladbaer-Colas relied on NAVITRONIC Plus®, the VÖGELE System for 3D Machine Control. They combined the system with a SBG external computer and tachymeters from Leica. On the job site in Iceland, the use of NAVITRONIC Plus® yielded major advantages: without 3D machine control, reference wires would have had to be installed. This way of proceeding would not only have been more costly, but also extremely difficult and time-consuming. On account of the air traffic, installing the wires was not possible in advance but only at the start of work. All told, at least 18km of reference wire would have been required at an estimated cost of some 50,000 Euros.

SUPER 1800-2 and HAMM DV 70 VO ensure paving on schedule

The overall width of the runway and landing strip at Akureyri Airport is 45m. Added to this are hard shoulders, 7.5m wide on each side, yielding a total width of 60m. The SUPER 1800-2 paved wearing course in a thickness of 5cm. After completion, two DV 70 VO tandem rollers from HAMM joined in. Weighing around 8 tonnes and equipped with oscillation technology, the rollers compacted the asphalt to perfection. The pavement profile specified in both the longitudinal and the transverse directions, too, was met with high accuracy thanks to NAVITRONIC Plus®. Beyond all that, the NAVITRONIC Plus® solution for machine control offers a unique advantage: as a real 3D system, it not only controls fully automatically the pavement’s grade and slope, but also the screed’s position and the paver’s direction of motion.

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