Road safety barriers are roadside structures installed on certain sections of the road to improve highway safety by preventing a vehicle from leaving the road and colliding with roadside hazards. Road safety barriers are an effective solution for reducing the risk of injuries on modern roads. A road safety barrier must meet minimum standards of construction and materials design. Normally, they must undergo crash tests according to the European standard EN 1317 or the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. On the basis of these standards, each safety barrier must pass standardized crash tests as mandated in their approval procedures. Currently, computer simulation methods are typically used by researchers to analyze the performance of roadside safety barriers. Advancement in computer technology could facilitate the finite element method in replacing expensive experimental tests. This paper presents an approach for constructing and evaluating a finite element model for road safety barriers according to European standard EN 1317 by using the finite element code LS-DYNA. Excellent agreement between real-world test data and simulation results was achieved for behavior and impact severity values. The results obtained using the model ensure the exactness of the proposed method and prove that the numerical method is a practical approach for eliminating road safety barrier problems. Furthermore, the model was able to replace experimental tests for developing road safety barriers, thus reducing time and money.
W-beam guardrails are the most widely used road safety barriers worldwide. They are used for protecting vehicle occupants on dangerous areas of roadways. All road safety barriers used on European highways are designed according to the European standard EN 1317. Conventionally, such road safety barriers have the following dimensions: a 750-mm height from the top of the W-beam to the ground and a 1.33-, 2-, or 4-m post spacing. This study applied the finite element code LS-DYNA for evaluating the safety performance of an AG04-2.0 A-type barrier, which was designed using three post spacings and various rail heights, when impacted by a 900-kg small passenger car. Eight crash test simulations were conducted for evaluating the crashworthiness of the AG04-2.0 barrier according to the European Standard EN 1317. A baseline model was developed and validated against the existing crash test models. The results showed that the various post spacings (1.33, 2, and 4 m) and rail heights (600, 650, 700, 750 and 800 mm) enabled the AG04-2.0 barrier to withstand the impact of the 900-kg car, satisfying the EN 1317 criteria (i.e. TB11 test). The 2000-mm post spacing and 700-mm rail height were considered the optimal dimensions for AG04-2.0 road safety barriers.
This study applied the finite element code LS-DYNA for evaluating the crashworthiness of W-beam guardrail. Four crash test simulations were conducted for evaluating the safety performance of the W-beam guardrail with four different post configuration according to the European standard EN1317. The results showed that the best performance was demonstrated by the sigma-shaped posts and the I-shaped posts absorbed the lowest amount of impact energy. The optimal result was registered by the barrier with sigma-shaped posts, which demonstrated a lower ASI value and higher energy crash absorption than the other models did.
W-beam guardrails are the most widely used road safety barriers worldwide. They are used for protecting vehicle occupants on dangerous areas of roadways. The ability of Wbeam guardrails to absorb some of the crash energy reduces the risk of injury for vehicle occupants and limits deformation of impacting vehicles. Once the rail separates from the posts, the rail forms a redirection ribbon, guiding the vehicles away from the nearby hazard. Thus, the soil-post interaction in W-beam guardrails play a critical role in the manner in which errant vehicles interact with safety barriers. All road safety barriers used on European highways are designed according to the European standard EN 1317. This study applied the finite element code LS-DYNA for evaluating the safety performance of W-beam guardrail when the post rammed into various soil properties. Four crash test simulations were conducted for evaluating the crashworthiness of the W-beam guardrail according to European Standard EN 1317. The results have demonstrated that the soil properties does not affect the impact severity (ASI, THIV) but affects working width.
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