Research on a Real-Time Monitoring Platform for

Compaction of High Embankment in Airport Engineering

Yang-Ping Yao, Ph.D., M.ASCE 1; Yang-Zhi Ruan 2; Jun Chen, Ph.D. 3; Yi Geng 4; Xing Zhang 5;
Bing-Yang Liu 6; Xiao-Peng Zong 7; and Gui-Zhen Yu 8
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Abstract: Quality control of embankment compaction is of great significance to the durability and stability of high-embankment airports.
The current method of embankment quality control mainly relies on manual inspection for a limited number of designated locations after
the completion of compaction, which cannot provide the information feedback simultaneously during the compaction or guarantee the
compaction quality of the entire working surface. There is an urgent need to develop a new quality-control method of high-embankment
airports for the full course of the compaction process. In this paper, a management platform is developed to monitor the real-time compaction
process of a high-embankment airport and evaluate the compaction quality of the working surface. To mitigate the effect of human factors to
a minimal extent, an optimal path algorithm to guide the real-time compaction trajectory of the impact compactor is proposed, and the
unmanned vehicle control technology is implemented on the impact compactor. Furthermore, a virtual-reality tool is incorporated in the
developed management platform to provide a three-dimensional interactive display for the compaction process. The feasibility and robustness
of the developed management platform is validated by a case study in a pilot section of Beijing Daxing International Airport. The data
collected in the case study show that the proposed optimal path algorithm and unmanned vehicle control technique enable the construction
process to be faster and more efficient and improve the compaction quality of embankment. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001411.
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
Author keywords: Airport construction; High-embankment compaction; Real-time monitoring; Optimal path; Unmanned vehicle control;
Information technologies.

Introduction The time-consuming manual inspection also results in delays in

The compaction quality of embankments is critical to the stability
and durability of airports constructed on high embankments. Inad-
equate compaction of a soil subgrade has immeasurable consequen-
ces that are often costly and even dangerous to the general public
(Wells 2014). The current method of compaction quality control is
very limited, as it mainly relies on the manual inspection of certain
designated locations in the construction site. However, the informa-
tion collected from a limited number of locations cannot represent
the accurate compaction condition of the entire working surface.
1
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
2
Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
3
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China (corresponding
author). E-mail: junchen@buaa.edu.cn
4 anywhere and usually have good gradation. In airport projects,
Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
5
Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
6 paction effect. Unfortunately, the heavy vibration of an impact
Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
7
Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
8
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Beihang Univ., Xueyuan
Rd. No. 37, Haidian District, Beijing 100191, China.
Note. This manuscript was submitted on March 20, 2017; approved on
June 29, 2017; published online on November 15, 2017. Discussion
period open until April 15, 2018; separate discussions must be submitted
for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Construction
Engineering and Management, © ASCE, ISSN 0733-9364.
the correction of quality issues found in the current stage and the
operation of construction work in the next stage. Thus, the tradi-
tional monitoring method is not efficient enough to meet the needs
of tightly scheduled high-embankment projects in airport engineer-
ing, and it cannot provide real-time compaction information for
engineers and contractors. There is an urgent need to enhance the
process management of compaction construction. Although some
experience has been gained in previous highway construction and
dam engineering projects (Liu et al. 2012; Zhong et al. 2010;
Zhong and Zhang 2003), several unique engineering characteristics
should be considered in airport construction. First, the working sur-
face of road and dam projects is narrow compared with that of air-
ports, and the excavation and filling amount of a high-embankment
airport is larger. Thus, more compaction machineries are needed in
airport construction, and managing a large number of machineries
and providing feedback in time remain a big challenge. Second,
in road and dam projects, the filling materials can come from
most materials are locally acquired and usually have bad gradation
(e.g., the maximal size of filling materials can be as large as 0.5 m);
thus, an impact compactor has to be used to guarantee the com-
compactor habitually makes machine operators not strictly follow
the compaction protocol and miss the compaction requirements.
Because of these problems, it is a priority in engineering practice
of airport construction to upgrade the quality-control method of
high-embankment compaction.
The objective of this research is to develop a management
platform used in airport construction that can real-time monitor
the compaction process and evaluate the construction quality of the
working surface simultaneously. The major advantage of the new

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J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096

 platform is to provide an optimal algorithm of the compaction
path for the impact compactor equipped with unmanned control
technology. In addition, a three-dimensional virtual-scene module
is incorporated in the developed platform to display the virtual
reality of the construction process. The feasibility and robustness
of the developed monitoring and controlling platform is demon-
strated through a case study in the Beijing Daxing International
Airport.
History of Compaction Monitoring System
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the importance of
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compaction process control for high embankment in highway
and dam projects has been recognized. Different monitoring sys-
tems for compaction has been developed and applied in engineer-
ing practice. Although these systems use diverse techniques such as
radio and network transmission techniques, there is an inherent re-
lationship among them. According to the information transmission
technique, these systems developed in previous studies can be di-
vided into three generations.
The first-generation systems are characterized by wire transmis-
sion. After vibratory rollers became widely used, machinery man-
ufacturers focused on developing wired monitoring systems that
can correlate the compaction characteristics and construction qual-
ity in road construction. There are four popular systems designed
for single vibratory roller: Bomag variocontrol (BVC) by Bomag
in Germany (Briaud and Seo 2003; Hossain et al. 2006), Ammann
compaction expert (ACE) by Ammann in Sweden (Kaufmann and
Anderegg 2008); compactometer by Geodynamik in Switzerland
[Sandström and Pettersson 2004; A. Sandstrom, “Control of a com-
pacting machine with a measurement of the characteristics of
the ground material,” U.S. Patent No. 5,727,900 (1998)]; and
machine drive power (MDP) by Caterpillar in the United States
[P. T. Corcoran and F. Fernandez, “Method and apparatus for
determining the performance of a compaction machine based on
energy transfer,” U.S. Patent No. 6,188,942 (2001); Thompson
and White 2008].
The second-generation systems adopted radio to transmit the
location data of the global positioning system (GPS) for single
vibratory roller. These systems considered excitation frequency,
pavement temperature, and material type (Chang et al. 2014;
Dell’Acqua et al. 2012; Horan 2014; Xu et al. 2015) and provided
a construction method that adjusted the number of compaction
passes and excitation frequency. In the field of earth-rock dam,
a GPS real-time supervisory system was first applied in the engi-
neering construction of the ShuiBuYa Dam in China (Huang 2006).
The third-generation systems started to use the network of gen-
eral packet radio service (GPRS) for data transmission. Radio was
still the communication link for exchanges of information among
GPS stations. Zhong et al. (2011) and Liu et al. (2014) researched
the monitoring system of high-core rock-fill dam to monitor the
velocity of machineries, frequency and excitation force of vibratory
roller, and pavement thickness. The proposed system is an auto-
matic control and real-time monitoring system for dam mate-
rial transport truck watering. It has demonstrated its value in the
NuoZhaDu Dam project.
Although these studies improved the compaction quality control
in highway and dam projects, it is not fully applicable to airport
construction. The compaction construction of airport projects has
its own unique situation and specific problems. First, a large num-
ber of machineries work on the same working surface. Without a
robust management system, the duplication of compaction area can
usually happen. Second, machine operators have to work in severe
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construction conditions, including strong vibration caused by
poorly graded filling materials, pressure of meeting construction
deadlines, and strong labor intensity. The quality and speed of com-
paction will be thus affected by human factors. Finally, the usually
numerous working surfaces in a large airport project can be chal-
lenging to monitor simultaneously.
Therefore, the compaction construction of high-embankment
airports needs a system that enables the process of monitoring
and controlling to be smarter, faster, and more efficient, such as an
optimal compaction path to avoid duplication of compaction, an
unmanned vehicle control technology to eliminate variability attrib-
utable to human factors, and a virtual-reality technique to provide
real-time compaction processes. The novel management platform
developed with these features is presented in this paper.
Monitoring and Controlling System
As aforementioned, the compaction of a high-embankment airport
is carried out by using an impact compactor, and the compaction
quality is influenced by multiple factors, including conditions of
working surface, attributes of filling soil, path of the machinery,
mechanical properties, and traveling velocity. Different arrange-
ments of machineries may be used during the entire compaction
process. The impact compactor may work alone or with other
machineries. Therefore, the operation parameters of compaction are
controllable for the compaction quality if the properties of the
machinery are identified. According to construction specifications
(CAAC 2017), the recommended velocity of the impact compactor
is between 10 and 12 m=s. Thus, the compaction trajectory of the
impact compactor becomes the adjustable factor that determines
compaction efficiency and effectiveness. The compaction process
parameters, such as velocity of the impact compactor, compaction
trajectory, and mechanical status, can be collected and analyzed in
real time with techniques of 4G transmission and cloud radiation.
The compaction result parameters, such as the number of compac-
tion passes and planned compaction trajectory, will be displayed on
the management platform to prompt engineers and guide machine
operators.
In this paper, a new monitoring and controlling system is pro-
posed to provide mobile management based on new techniques,
such as cloud server, Beidou satellite navigation guiding and posi-
tioning system (BDS), and 4G mobile transmission. The system
is called the high-embankment monitoring system (HEMS). The
HEMS is described in the next section.
Framework of the HEMS
The HEMS provides a real-time monitoring and controlling solu-
tion for the compaction construction of high-embankment airports.
The HEMS consists of a BDS base station, several BDS mobile
stations, 4G transmission module, portable application description
(PAD), the software of the management platform, and a cloud
server. Unlike previous generations of systems, the HEMS has no
central control station or field monitoring substations. It is capable
of assigning different privileges to various engineers according to
their respective responsibility. The management platform allows
users to log into the system anytime and anywhere, which makes
it unnecessary to set up the central monitoring station. With the
application of cloud radiation, the HEMS establishes a new infor-
mation sharing and project management pattern. The process of
information collection and analysis of construction site is illustrated
in Fig. 1 and is as follows:
1. The BDS real-time kinematic technology (RTK) is applied
to locating the impact compactor. The BDS RTK technology
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Fig. 1. Monitoring approach of HEMS
provides an accuracy resolution in centimeters, which is the
same as in a GPS RTK and costs only one-fifth of the price
of a GPS station. In addition, the BDS station has a better
shock resistance, interference-resistant property, and tempera-
ture adaptability (Yang et al. 2014). The BDS station mainly
contains a 4G transmission module, which has a subscriber
identity module (SIM) inside, a BDS receiver module, a BDS
antenna, and a 4G antenna. The base station and mobile station
are needed to implement the BDS RTK. One base station can
serve for several mobile stations. The base station is fixed on a
stable, high, and empty location where the commercial power
is supplied. The mobile stations are mounted in the cab of the
impact compactor and uses the vehicle’s power. A sealed case is
designed to resist moisture and dust.
2. The BDS modules obtain the initial location information from
the Beidou satellites every 10 ms. The difference correction
message of RTK is transmitted from the base station to the mo-
bile stations through 4G network. Then mobile stations calculate
the accurate location information and send it proactively to the
cloud server for further analysis.
3. The engineering analysis software collects all location informa-
tion saved in the cloud server, analyzes compaction trajectory
of the impact compactors, and calculates the number of compac-
tion passes on each working surface. These compaction param-
eters are obtained and saved in the database. The data can be
reached by the management platform on users’ computer or
PAD installed in the cab of the impact compactor. The manage-
ment platform has a visual interface, which displays the opera-
tion parameters vividly.
4. The requirements such as the construction specifications, qual-
ity standards, and construction schedule will be pre-established
in the management platform. If the compaction operation
parameters do not meet the requirements, the personnel in
charge will receive the corresponding warning message sent by
the management platform. The adjustment measures taken by
the administrator will be recorded by the management platform
for the evaluation of construction quality.
There are several advantages of the HEMS. First, it provides a
much more convenient way to exchange information among the
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J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096
different levels of users. Each user has an account with different
management privileges. Users can access the construction informa-
tion and manage the construction procedure anytime and anywhere
through the cloud server. Second, the proposed optimal path can be
adjusted simultaneously according to real-time compaction infor-
mation. This helps machine operators to select the compaction tra-
jectory quickly. Third, the unmanned impact compactor enables the
compaction mode to be more efficient, as it will follow the pre-
scribed path strictly. Fourth, the three-dimensional (3D) view of
construction sites is regenerated to help engineers become familiar
with the real-time working environment. These benefits will ulti-
mately lead to better compaction of loose filling materials and bet-
ter construction efficiency.
Transmission and Analysis of Real-Time Information
According to the location data of impact compactor and properties
of machineries, other compaction operation data, including the
number of compaction passes and compaction trajectory, will be
analyzed dynamically.
Considering that the BDS stations provide a location resolution
in centimeters, the working surface can be divided into 8 × 8-cm
grids, as shown in Fig. 2. In addition, the position of the impact
compactor is collected automatically every 2 s in the HEMS. The
impact compactor contains two rollers with a width of approxi-
mately 0.9 m. Thus, there are two quadrilaterals between two near-
est locations covering some grids of the working surface. Fig. 2
indicates the trajectory of one roller and the grids it covers. The
quadrilateral area is determined by the width of the compactor
roller, compaction direction, and distance between two nearest
data points. The grids are identified by the locations of the cen-
troid point and four vertices. The vertices’ longitude and latitude
form four vectors in an anticlockwise direction, e.g., v~ 1 ðx2 − x1 ;
y2 − y1 Þ. If the centroid point coordinates of grids, Ci ðxi ; yi Þ, sat-
isfy the following formulas, these grids are judged to be in the two
quadrilaterals, and the number of compaction passes will increase
by 1:
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Fig. 2. Calculation method of the number of compaction passes
ðy2 − y1 Þxi þ ðx1 − x2 Þyi þ x2 y1 − x1 y2 < 0
ðy3 − y2 Þxi þ ðx2 − x3 Þyi þ x3 y2 − x2 y3 < 0
ðy4 − y3 Þxi þ ðx3 − x4 Þyi þ x4 y3 − x3 y4 < 0
ðy1 − y4 Þxi þ ðx4 − x1 Þyi þ x1 y4 − x4 y1 < 0
This method avoids calculating the number of compaction
passes repeatedly on the corner and considers the situation when
multi-impact compactors work simultaneously.
The compaction operation parameters are visualized by the
management platform, which is developed on the basis of the C#
development environment of Visual Studio, DevExpress control,
and GMap.Net. DevExpress provides in-class user interface con-
trols for WinForms. GMap.Net is an open-source control and can
freely connect with the map interface of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and
ArcGIS. The platform has the most frequently used map functions
of group on earth observations (GEO), including running in the
mobile environment, zooming in and out, searching path, marking
location, displaying map, locating, tracking, and geocoding. The
whole map contains several overlays, markers, routes, and poly-
gons. Markers are used to show the position of the impact com-
pactors. Routes indicate the compaction trajectory. The different
numbers of compaction passes are displayed by polygons with dif-
ferent colors.
The management platform adopts the Google China map inter-
face. There is a certain deviation between the locations’ coordinates
of the BDS system and the used map. An approximate transforma-
tion approach from BDS position to map position is briefly pre-
sented in this paper, and the detailed code for the transformation
procedure is available online (CodePlex 2017). Taking the offset
of latitude as an example, the formulas are as follows:
pffiffiffiffi
180m mΔLa
GCLat ¼ BDSLa þ
πRe ð1 − eÞ
where GCLat = corresponding latitude of Google China Map;
BDSLa = latitude of BDS system; Re = radius of Earth; and e =
eccentricity of Earth. The formulas of ΔLa and m are as follows:
© ASCE
J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ΔLa ¼ −100 þ 2Ln þ 3La þ 0.2La2 þ 0.1LaLn þ 0.2 jLnj
2
þ ½20Sinð6πLnÞ þ 20Sinð2πLnÞ
3
  
2 π
þ 20Sinð6πLaÞ þ 40Sin La
3 3
    
2 π π
þ 160Sin La þ 320Sin La ð3Þ
3 12 30
 
BDSLa
m ¼ 1 − esin2 π ð4Þ
180
La ¼ BDSLa − 35; Ln ¼ BDSLn − 105 ð5Þ
where BDSLa and BDSLn = latitude and longitude of the BDS
system, respectively.
During the compaction, two main parameters should be con-
trolled strictly: the compaction velocity and the number of compac-
tion passes. The compaction velocity influences the impact energy.
On one hand, the impact energy will not be satisfied if the velocity
is too slow. On the other hand, the impact energy cannot spread
completely to the loose soils if the vehicle runs too fast. Thus, the
driving velocity should be controlled within a certain range. At the
beginning of compaction, the impact compactor causes a large plas-
tic deformation and settlement of filling soil because the soil layer
is soft. After several rounds of compaction, the increment of set-
tlement decreases, and finally the soil layer tends to be stable. If the
number of compaction passes is not large enough, the deformation
ð1Þ of compacted layer will remain, and it will be harmful for the em-
bankment safety. Conversely, if the number exceeds the threshold,
the effect of compaction becomes negligible and may even lead to
the expansion of the soil layer. Therefore, the threshold value of
compaction passes is not constant and is affected by the properties
of the filling materials, the requirements of the density, and the im-
pact energy of the compactor. An applicable scale including maxi-
mum and minimum values should be determined in engineering
practice.
Major Techniques
Optimal Path for Compaction in Real Time
In current compaction construction, the machine operators deter-
mine the driving path of impact compactors according to their own
experience. Therefore, some parts of the field are compacted more
times and become denser than other parts, which makes the filling
soil in the field uneven in terms of compaction effect, and uneven
settlement of the field could happen in the future. Thus, it is im-
portant to design an optimal path for the machinery to ensure bal-
anced compaction of the entire field.
Through analysis of the mechanical structure of the impact
compactor, two parameters are critical for compaction: the largest
breadth lb and the gap lg between two rollers. For the vibratory
roller, lg equals 0, and lb equals the width of the single drum.
For the impact compactor, lg does not equal zero, and lb equals
the width of the two same wheels. In addition, the minimal turning
radius rm is related to the mechanical properties. Taking the machi-
nery model YCT25 (Sany Heavy Industry, Beijing, China) as an
ð2Þ
example, the values of the mechanical property are as follows:
lg ¼ 0.9 m; lb ¼ 3 m; rm ¼ 5.8 m ð6Þ
As a new compaction machinery, the impact compactors have
both characteristics of vibrating and ramming. According to the
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Fig. 3. Design of the linear optimal path
requirements of compaction construction specifications, the adja-
cent compaction range of wheels should have an overlap width
of lo . The schematic of the linear path design is shown in Fig. 3.
The trajectory of the construction machinery is designed according
to the setting of the size of the wheel and the overlap, such as Lines
L1 –L9 . The first compaction in the far left area is completed after
the impact compactor goes along the routes from L1 to L3 .
The specified compaction path is based on the most standard-
ized case. On the construction site, the working surface is not
a regular quadrilateral but an irregular centrally convex shape. The
authors suggest calculating the maximum inscribed quadrilateral
Fig. 4. Whole optimal path and searching method
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that should be compacted first. In this quadrilateral, all the
linear paths are designed with the aforementioned method. Consid-
ering the turning of machineries, the optimal path should be a
circle; this can be done by connecting the linear paths with circular
features. As shown in Fig. 4, the number of linear paths in the
quadrilateral surface may be even or odd numbered. In the first
case, the machinery should go through L1 and turn to L8 , which
is in the middle of the surface. Along the direction marked in Fig. 4,
L2 , L9 , L3 , L10 , L4 , L11 , L5 , L12 , L6 , L13 , L7 , and L14 are passed
successively. However, in the second case, the machinery turns
back to L1 and goes through the extra path L15 after it passes
through L14 . No matter which case it is, the machinery can get back
to the point where it starts. The circle optimal path is designed to
deal with the situation wherever the machinery is in the working
surface.
Except for the aforementioned quadrilateral, the rest is outside
this quadrilateral and within the working surface. The optimal path
of this part should be designed as an irregular shape that is the same
as the boundary shape of the working surface. The shape inside is
smaller than the shape outside. The adjacent paths keep the same
interval. All the paths are made into a spiral path.
During the compaction of the working surface, the machinery
already has a direction, as shown in Fig. 4. A circle range with a
designed radius rs and a limited angle α are used to delineate a
scope for searching the target location. To guide the machinery to
go the positions not reached yet, the number of compaction passes
around the target locations must be investigated to confirm the most
suitable one. After compacting the quadrilateral, the impact com-
pactor starts from the path of the outmost irregular shape and goes
along the spiral path. The work is not done until the mean number
of compaction passes of different working surfaces in the whole
construction site meet the quality standards.
In the course of the compaction operation, the target locations
are constantly showed on the PAD installed in the cab. The optimal
path will guide the machine operator to complete the work in less
time; efficiency will be enhanced, and the structure of filling soil
will be more even.
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Fig. 5. Robot of unmanned controlling impaction (1 = base; 2 =
function of turning the steering wheel; 3 = function of hitting the brake;
4 = function of controlling the engine throttle; 5 = function of shifting
the lever)
Unmanned Control of the Impact Compactor
The optimal path provides a direct way to correct compaction
trajectory for machine operators. However, the compaction effect
is still heavily dependent on the behavior of machine operators,
who often do not strictly follow the designated path. Thus, the un-
manned control technology is applied for the implementation of the
optimal path first.
Once the properties of the machinery and the working surface
are selected, the original optimal path can be designed by the pre-
ceding method. The original optimal path is saved as several lo-
cated points in the cloud server. Each type of machinery has its
own path to complete the compaction.
A driving robot is designed to replace the machine operator. As
shown in Fig. 5, the robot is multifunctional—it can turn the steer-
ing wheel, control the engine throttle, operate the shift lever, and hit
the break. Through the motor drive, all these functions are realized
automatically by the industrial personal computer (IPC). During the
operation, the IPC will seek the points in the HEMS database ac-
cording to the real-time location of the impact compactor. The cue
Fig. 6. Presupposed line and actual path
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point keeps a certain distance in front of the machinery continu-
ously. On the basis of the cue and current point, the compaction
direction and rotation angle are calculated by the IPC, which then
sends the command to the motor drive. The motor drive will
execute the command immediately.
Several complex paths are used to verify the robustness of the
unmanned control technique. Fig. 6 shows the prescribed path,
the cue point, and the actual path. The maximal differentiation be-
tween the two lines is less than 10 cm, which indicates that tech-
nique of unmanned control is favorably robust.
3D Virtual-Reality Platform
In airport construction, the working surfaces are widely distributed
in a large area. The technique of 3D virtual reality provides an
effective way to exhibit the construction sites. The 3D virtual real-
ity platform requires three parts: models of construction sites and
machineries, real-time data, and interactive functions.
Three-dimensional modeling is the foundation to build a scene
of virtual simulation. The models of construction sites can be di-
rectly designed by using the commercial software package Unity.
However, the machineries should be modeled by the software
package 3D Studio Max and then imported into the developing
environment of Unity. Some objects such as buildings, trees, and
roads are static in the virtual scene, but the models of the impact
compactor are dynamic, which are established in the virtual scene
on the basis of the real-time location data. In each frame, the
virtual-reality platform obtains the position information of spe-
cific impact compactors from the cloud data server. The virtual-
reality scene will change according to the actual number of impact
compactors.
The software Unity provides the basic functions to display the
scene in different camera views. Users can transform the scene with
a keyboard and a mouse. This virtual-reality platform has the in-
teractive functions of selecting a construction site and overviewing
the whole project.
Fig. 7 shows the real and virtual scene of the construction site in
a pilot section of the Beijing Daxing International Airport. The dark
area under the impact compactor is its trajectory. After the user se-
lects the project, tender, and working surface, the models of cor-
responding machineries are built in a given position. The platform
obtains the location of the impact compactors and updates the po-
sition of models. With the animation of models, it is shown in the
virtual scene that the impact compactor moves along with the given
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Fig. 7. Real and virtual scene of construction site (image by Yang-Zhi Ruan)

location information. Therefore, the actual situation can be vividly
displayed in the platform in real time.
Case Study in the Beijing Daxing International
Airport
Located in Daxing District of Beijing, the Beijing Daxing
International Airport is currently under construction. The total
amount of the filling soil will be 4.97 × 106 m3 , which makes it
necessary to adopt the impact compactor as a high-embankment
airport does. This case study focuses on a working surface at a pilot
section in the construction. The entire process was recorded and
guided by the HEMS.
Two kinds of filling materials are used at the pilot section: soil
and gravel. There are two rectangles with a width of 10 m and a
length of 150 m. Three types of machineries are used for the
compaction. The predefined compaction process is as follows:
First, the impact compactor with a pentagon wheel compacts the
field five times; second, the impact compactor with a triangular
wheel compacts the field 10 times, and then the impact compac-
tor with a pentagon wheel compacts the field again five times;

Fig. 8. Data processing software on cloud server

© ASCE 04017096-7 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096

 finally, the vibratory roller compacts the field to flatten the sur-
face of the soil.
The BDS base station is installed at a fixed location of the pilot
section. The mobile station is placed in the machinery, and the an-
tennas of the BDS and 4G module are fixed on the top of the cab.
The tests were first run on an impact compactor driven by the ma-
chine operator. Fig. 8 shows the interface of data analysis module of
the management platform where the locations of the machinery can
be recorded and analyzed. Fig. 9 shows the real-time results of the
number of compaction passes, compaction trajectory, and speed.
There are three major issues found during the manual controlled
test: the actual speed fails to satisfy the quality standard; uniformity
does not conform to the construction specifications; and the number
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Usually, the required speed limit set by the guideline is
10–12 m=s. As shown in Fig. 10, the machinery worked for more
than 3 h. However, the impact compactor worked at a desired speed
for only half of the construction time. This indicates that machine
operators habitually ignore or pay no attention to the speed on the
dial. Therefore, the speed of the rolling machine must be monitored
by the administrator who can give an appropriate order to the ma-
chine operators.
During the construction, the specific compaction process is re-
quired to ensure uniformity of the soil layer. The soil layer needs to
be compacted evenly in the entire area before the second compac-
tion. Fig. 11 shows the number of compaction passes and the real-
time optimal path. It can be seen that the machine operators usually

of compaction passes is less than the expected number. get used to running the machinery in the middle of the working

Fig. 9. Visualization of compaction variables

Fig. 10. Actual speed without any guidance

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J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096

Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Glasgow University Library on 11/17/17. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

Fig. 11. Number of compaction passes and optimal path

surface and omitting the marginal zone. Thus, it is necessary to
check the uniformity of soil layer after each compaction.
The number of compaction passes is a significant index in the
quality control of compaction. The test results indicate that only
42.77% of the working surface actually meets the compaction qual-
ity requirements when the machine operators claim to have com-
pletely finished. This indicates that machine operators estimate the
quality of compaction inaccurately.
In summary, the optimal path was not strictly followed in the
manual controlled tests, and the compaction quality cannot be guar-
anteed. The unmanned vehicle control system is thus introduced in
the tests, which is installed in the cab of the impact compactor,
as shown in Fig. 12. The steering wheel, accelerator, and brakes
are controlled by the robot as shown in Fig. 5. To test the robustness
of the unmanned control technique, several shapes of trajectories
are executed by the unmanned system, such as line of eight-shaped,
spiral, and ring. These paths are designed and saved in the database
in the cloud server. The IPCs of the unmanned system analyze and
obtain the target points and set the electric machineries to drive the
impact compactors. The testing results show that the unmanned ve-
hicle control system keeps the impact compactor running at a speed
between 10 and 12 m=s in 98% of the working time, which is much

Fig. 12. Unmanned control system (images by Yang-Zhi Ruan)

© ASCE 04017096-9 J. Constr. Eng. Manage.

J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 2018, 144(1): 04017096

 better than the results in the case of manual control in Fig. 10.
In addition, the position difference between the actual trajectory
of impact compactor and the designed optimal path is constantly
less than 10 cm, which meets with the needs of the controlling
precision.
Conclusions
According to the engineering features and requirements of high
embankment in airport construction, a new monitoring and control-
ling platform for compaction quality is developed in this work with
the incorporation of several new techniques including BDS, cloud
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server, virtual-reality model, optimal path algorithm, and un-
manned vehicle control technology. The centimeter-level precision
enables the BDS to be applied and popularized in airport engineer-
ing. The efficient transmission of the cloud server ensures the real-
time sharing of engineering information. The proposed optimal
path comprehensively improves the compaction efficiency by re-
ducing redundant compaction trajectories. The 3D virtual-reality
platform recreates the real construction sites. The unmanned ve-
hicle control system is first applied in compaction construction with
the impact compactor. The unmanned vehicle control technique
avoids the heavy vibration suffered by machine operators and
makes construction more accurate and smarter when compared
with the manual control. The hardware and software systems of the
platforms are fully tested in a pilot section of the Beijing Daxing
International Airport. The results indicate that the developed
HEMS platform equipped with the unmanned vehicle control sys-
tem can effectively manage the embankment construction and has
promising prospects in airport construction.
Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the
corresponding author by request. Information about the Journal’s
data sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10
.1061/%28ASCE%29CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
This paper was supported by a grant from the Major State Basic
Research Development Program of China (973 Program) (No.
2014CB047006). The authors thank the information management
centers of Beihang University and China Airport Construction
Group Corp. for their help.
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