Safety Performance Evaluation of Posts for Use in a New Short Radius Guardrail for Intersecting Roadways

Guardrail systems used along roadways are intended to redirect impacting vehicle or in the case of short-radius guardrail, capture the vehicle at certain impact points. Kinetic energy is dissipated during any impact event through the deformation of the rail and posts and post rotation through the soil. This dissipated energy reduces the risk of injury to the vehicle's occupants. Previous development of a short radius system has shown significant improvement over the existing NCHRP 230-compliant system. Unfortunately, the system length and backside space requirements made the system impractical to use in most real-world applications. In addition, any necessary improvements to help the system meet the current safety performance criteria would only further increase the system length. Therefore, a need exists to develop a new barrier system that can be used near intersecting roadways, driveways, and streets that would meet the MASH TL-3 safety performance criteria. The current project of developing an impact attenuation system (short radius system) for intersection roadways has funding to conduct background research on previous short-radius designs and for concept development. However, further research is needed to evaluate different post sizes and types that could potentially be utilized during concept development. Therefore, this project seeks to supplement the concept development of a new short-radius system for intersecting roadways.

• Record URL:
  http://matc.unl.edu/research/research_projects.php?researchID=499

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $52500.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT12-G-UTC07

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  University Transportation Centers Program
  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Performing Organizations:

  University of Nebraska, Lincoln

  Lincoln, NE  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Faller, Ronald

  Lechtenberg, Karla

  Reid, John

• Start Date: 20120701
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20131231
• Source Data: RiP Project 32779

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Barriers (Roads); Crash tests; Guardrails; Intersections; Posts; Radius
• Uncontrolled Terms: Safety performance
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01483147
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Mid-America Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: DTRT12-G-UTC07
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jun 5 2013 1:01AM