The purpose of the tests reported herein was to assess the performance of the Midwest Guardrail System (MGS) with critical flare according to the safety-performanxe evaluation guideline including in the American Associate of State Highway 6 and Transportation Officials 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 3-10: An 1100C vehicle weighing 2,420 lb impacting the guardrail while traveling at 62 mi/h and 25 degrees.
MASH Test 3-11: An 2270P vehicle weighing 5,000 lb impacting the guardrail while traveling at 62 mi/h and 25 degrees.
This report provides details on the MGS guardrail with critical flare, the crash tests and results, and the performance assessment of the MGS guardrail with flare for MASH TL-3 guardrail evaluation criteria. The MGS guardrail with critcal flare tested at the considered flare conditions did not meet the performance crtieria for MASH TL-3 guardrails. After the full-scale crash tests were complete, an effort was initiated through finite element modeling and simulations to investigate the crashworthiness of the MGS at smaller flare rates and to consider priotized MGS retrofit options, still for high-speed impact conditions.
