Crashworthiness of guardrail posts embedded in cohesionless soils: a parametric study

ABSTRACT

Guardrail systems are designed to provide a safe environment for vehicles and to reduce the severity of occupants’ injuries. The performance of this safety system is deemed to be vital to highway users. Guardrail post is probably the most important component of any guardrail system design. The evaluation of guardrail post's performance usually involves crash tests, which consist of colliding the post with a bogie. Crashworthiness tests try to cover a range of design parameters such as the soil resistance, impact velocity and blockout crushability. When reviewing the available various dynamic tests conducted to date, it is apparent that the range of the considered design parameters varies widely. Because of the lack of consistency of the diverse test conditions, the statistical analysis of the test results is not an easy task. In the present paper, the finite element method has been employed as a tool to conduct a parametric study and generate statistical data. The generated data are used to establish correlations between the post parameters and the system performance indicators.

KEYWORDS:

• Guardrail post
• dynamic test
• finite element model
• cohesionless soil

Acknowledgments

The work reported in the present paper was supported by grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research of Canada (NSERC) and AUTO21.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.