Simulating the impact of a truck on a road-safety barrier

Road safety can be improved by applying appropriate road-safety barriers that prevent road-traffic participants from entering dangerous areas. In terms of preventing vehicles from veering off the road, a road-safety barrier should redirect the impacting vehicle back onto the road. In the process of doing so it should absorb as much of the vehicle,v kinetic energy as possible through its deformation, so reducing the deceleration off the vehicle occupants. This paper considers a computer simulation of a truck impact on a steel road-safety barrier Parametric computer simulations were used to evaluate the different additional safety elements of the road-safety barrier. The dynamic finite-element explicit code LS-DYNA was used for this purpose. The computer simulations prove that the analyzed road-safety barrier design is strong enough to retain and redirect the truck back onto the roadway. Appropriately, the high absorption of the impacting vehicle kinetic energy through the safety-barrier deformation is observed at the same time, which indicates a reduction in a vehicle deceleration, and with that, a higher safety level for the vehicle occupants. (C) 2006 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.