Abstract
The investigation of the performance of road barriers to the car collision is not very often studied in the literature despite the importance of the topic to the passengers' safety. Indeed, the various road barriers systems are seldom compared in terms of their capabilities in reducing the overall damage in an accident. Here, flexible and rigid road restraint system subjected to a 900 kg car impact is studied in detail via a finite element simulation, with the model being validated against experimental results. The model relies on dynamic material properties for the guardrail, which were measured in Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar. Three severity occupant indexes, ASI, THIV and PHD, are explored and used to infer road barriers behaviour when interacting with a light vehicle. It is also investigated the failure limit of bolted connections and its influence on the guardrail impact result by means of the car trajectory. According to test TB11 from EN 1317 standard, the impact simulation results using a 900 kg car show that the flexible guardrail is safer than any of the analysed concrete barriers.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hascall JA, Faller RK, Reid JD, Sicking DL (2007) Investigating the use of small-diameter softwood as guardrail posts (dynamic test results). Forest Products Laboratory, Technical report, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Alves M (2015) Road fatalities among Brazilian children: legislation and data analyses. In: Protection of children in cars: 13th international conference, TÜV, München
DPVAT (2012) Boletim estatístico. Technical Report 4, Seguradora Líder - DPVAT
CNT (2009) Pesquisa cnt de rodovias 2009: relatório gerencial. Technical report, Confederação Nacional de Transportes CNT, SEST, SENAT
Wenzel T (2013) The effect of recent trends in vehicle design on U.S. societal fatality risk per vehicle mile traveled, and their projected future relationship with vehicle mass. Accid Anal Prev 56:71–81
Yin H, Fang H, Wang Q, Wen G (2016) Design optimization of a MASH TL-3 concrete barrier using RBF-based metamodels and nonlinear finite element simulations. Eng Struct 114:122–134
EN1317-2 road restraint systems—part 2: performance classes, impact test acceptance criteria and test methods for safety barriers
Atahan AO, Yüce AÖ, Erdem MM (2014) Crash testing and evaluation of a new generation l1 containment level guardrail. Eng Fail Anal 38:25–37
Ross HE, Sicking DL, Zimmer RA, Michie JD (1993) Recommended procedures for the safety performance evaluation of highway features. Technical report, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Report 350, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
Grzebieta RH, Zou R, Jiang T, Carey A (2005) Roadside hazard and barrier crashworthiness issues confronting vehicle and barrier manufactures and government regulators. Technical report, Monash University, Department of Civil Engineering, Australia
Plaxico CA, Ray MH, Hiranmayee K (2000) Comparison of the impact performance of the G4(1W) and G4(2W) guardrail systems under NCHRP Report 350 Test 3-11 conditions. Technical report, Transportation Research Record 1720, TRB, Washington, D.C.
Sennah K, Samaan M, Elmarakbi A (2003) Impact performance of flexible guardrail systems using LS-DYNA. In: 4th European LS-DYNA users conference
Shen X, Guo L, Yang L, Du X, Cao P (2008) Numerical analysis of impact effect on mechanical behavior of strong guardrail system. J Phys Conf Ser 96(1):012036. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/96/1/012036
Ferdous MR, Abu-Odeh A, Bligh RP, Jones HL, Sheikh NM (2011) Performance limit analysis for common roadside and median barriers using LS-DYNA. Int J Crashworth 16(6):691–706
Amato G, Orien F, Ghosh B, Williams G, Simms C (2013) A scaling method for modelling the crashworthiness of novel roadside barrier designs. Int J Crashworth 18(1):93–102
Driemeier L, Yoneda A, Moura RT, Alves M (2016) Performance of metallic defences submitted to vehicle impact. Int J Impact Eng 21(3):252–277
Zain MFBM, Mohammed HJ (2015) Concrete road barriers subjected to impact loads: an overview. Latin Am J Solids Struct 12(10):1824–1858
EN1317-1 road restraint systems—part 1: terminology and general criteria for test methods, 1998
LIER (2004) Barrier test robust work package 4-h2. Technical report, Laboratoire d’essais INRETS Equipements de la Route
Ray MH, Plaxico CA, Engstrand K (2001) Performance of w-beam splices. In: 80th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Washington, D.C
Sassi A, Ghrib F (2014) Development of finite element model for the analysis of a guardrail post subjected to dynamic lateral loading. Int J Crashworth 19(5):457–468
Wu W, Thomson R (2007) A study of the interaction between a guardrail post and soil during quasi-static and dynamic loading. Int J Impact Eng 34:883–898
NCAC. National crash analysis center. http://www.ncac.gwu.edu/. Accessed 30 May 2014
LIER (2002) Test report—round robin phase 2 tb11. Technical report, Laboratoire d’essais INRETS Equipements de la Route
Slycken J V (2008) Advanced use of a Split Hopkinson Bar setup—application to TRIP steels. PhD thesis, Academiejaar
Alves M (2000) Material constitutive law for large strains and strain rates. J Eng Mech 126(2):215–218
Driemeier L, Moura RT, Alves M, Machado IF (2015) A bifailure specimen for accessing failure criteria performance. Int J Plast 71:62–86
Tanlak N, Sonmez FO, Talay E (2010) Detailed and simplified models of bolted joints under impact loading. J Strain Anal 46:213–225
Gutowski M, Palta E, Fang H (2017) Crash analysis and evaluation of vehicular impacts on W-beam guardrails placed on sloped medians using finite element simulations. Adv Eng Softw 117:88–100
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Technical Editor: Paulo de Tarso Rocha de Mendonça.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Neves, R.R., Fransplass, H., Langseth, M. et al. Performance of some basic types of road barriers subjected to the collision of a light vehicle. J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng. 40, 274 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-018-1201-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-018-1201-x