TTI Research Supervisor: Nauman M. Sheikh, P.E. Associate Research Engineer Texas A&M Transportation Institute TAMU 3135 College Station, Texas 77843-3135 (979) 317-2695 [email protected]
Pooled Fund Representative: Shawn Debenham Utah Department of Transportation 4501 South 2700 West PO Box 143200 Salt Lake City, UT 84114-3200 (801) 965-4590 [email protected]
ABSTRACT
This report presents the development and full-scale crash testing of the Transition between Guardrail to Anchored Portable Concrete Barrier (“Transition”). The design of the Transition was developed using finite element simulation and analysis. A standard W-beam guardrail was connected to portable concrete barriers that were anchored to underlying asphalt using steel pins. The transition section was comprised of previously crash tested W-beam to nested Thrie-beam transition. This report presents the details and results of simulation analyses. It also presents the assessment of the performance of the Transition according to the safety-performance evaluation guidelines included in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH), Second Edition (1). The crash tests were performed in accordance with MASH Test Level 3 (TL-3), which requires two crash tests:
MASH Test 3-20: An 1100C vehicle weighing 2420 lb impacting the longitudinal barrier at 25 degrees, while travelling at 62 mi/h.
MASH Test 3-21: A 2270P vehicle weighing 5000 lb impacting the longitudinal barrier at 25 degrees, while traveling at 62 mi/h.
This report provides details of the Transition, the crash tests and results, and the performance assessment of the Transition for MASH TL-3 evaluation criteria for longitudinal barriers. The Transition between Guardrail to Anchored Portable Concrete Barrier met the performance criteria for MASH TL-3 for longitudinal barriers.
