United States Department of Transportation
i
Crash test and MASH TL-3 evaluation of the TxDOT short radius guardrail.
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2015-03-01
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[PDF-38.33 MB]
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Abstract:When a roadway intersects a highway with restrictive features such as a bridge rail and canal, it
becomes difficult to fit a guardrail with the proper length, transitions, and end treatment along the highway.
Possible solutions include relocating the constraint blocking the placement of the guardrail, shortening the
designed guardrail length, or designing a curved guardrail.
Curved, or short radius, guardrails typically present the most viable solution for these areas.
However, no previously designed short radius guardrails meet National Cooperative Highway Research
Program (NCHRP) Report 350 Test Level 3 (TL-3) guidelines. Now, the American Association of State
Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) has
updated crash testing criteria. The new guidelines supersede NCHRP Report 350 and increased the size of
test vehicles and changed the test matrices to include more impact conditions. Therefore, meeting new
impact standards for short radius guardrails has become more challenging.
TTI researchers investigated, modeled, and simulated an optimized short radius design under this
project. Subsequently, TTI researchers crash tested this system successfully to MASH 3-33, 3-32, 3-31, and
3-35 test conditions. This innovative design utilizes an energy dissipation component plus a cable anchor that
provides tension capacity to the rail section on the primary roadway, though an anchor BCT post on the
secondary road portion of the system. These new innovative design details made the system very effective in
capturing the vehicles in short distances while using readily available components.
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