01559024

Component

Bridge rails are a type of longitudinal barrier that serves the important purpose of keeping vehicles on the bridge structure. Many different designs have evolved for bridge rails, including some based upon the cross-sections used for rigid concrete safety shapes. These designs need to conform to the crashworthiness requirements of NCHRP Report 350 or MASH to be acceptable for use on U.S. highways. This analysis investigates the influence on crashworthiness for variations in bridge rail slope when construction processes cause deviations from design parameters. Crash simulation was utilized to assess the dynamic impact performance for a specific case. The simulations were conducted using trusted vehicle and barrier finite element models from the National Crash Analysis Center (NCAC) models array. The model was validated against data from full-scale crash tests and judged to provide good representations of vehicle impacts into bridge rails. The barrier model was modified to reflect variations in the face slope of the bridge rail (including the design slope and as-built condition). Crash simulations were undertaken to replicate NCHRP and MASH tests 4-11 and 4-12 to evaluate the differences in performance. The results were compared both visually and statistically under both NCHRP 350 and MASH criteria and the results suggest that there is little effect on the crashworthiness of the bridge rail for the ranges of face slopes analyzed.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFB20 Roadside Safety Design.

01550057

15-5818

English

19p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Photos; References (14) ; Tables

Bridge railings; Bridges; Crash tests; Crashworthiness; Simulation

Bridges and other structures; Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I85: Safety Devices used in Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-5818

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 1:57PM