Citation

Atahan AO, Arslan T. Int. J. Heavy Veh. Syst. 2012; 19(1): 76.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJHVS.2012.045761

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Vehicle collisions result in many injuries and fatalities every year all around the world. A significant number of those incidents occur outside the roadway, partly owing to the incompatibility between the roadside safety hardware and impacting vehicles. Although the purpose of using roadside safety hardware is safely to contain impacting vehicles and reduce impact severity, use of inadequate safety hardware can have serious consequences. In this study, the crash behaviour of a currently used double W-beam transition barrier was analysed and its adequacy is evaluated using a series of five vehicular impacts. Finite element simulations were used to perform the analysis, and a full-scale crash test result was used to validate the finite element models used in the study. Results of the analysis predict that double W-beam transition can safely contain and redirect vehicles ranging from compact automobiles to high centre of gravity heavy trucks up to 10,000 kg in mass. Occupant injury risk values obtained from all five cases are also calculated and presented. Further use of computational tools in safety evaluation of the existing roadside safety hardware is strongly recommended.