Development of a MASH Test-Level 4 Compliant Guardrail

Currently, there is a lack of public domain Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Test Level 4 (TL-4) guardrail systems, which involves testing the guardrail system with a single unit truck, a pickup truck, and a small passenger sedan. Several corridors in Texas are known to experience a larger percentage of freight and truck traffic. In these corridors, safety of the motoring public can greatly benefit from the use of a MASH TL-4 compliant guardrail system. Some concrete barrier designs are MASH TL-4 compliant; however, being significantly more expensive than metal beam guardrails, these designs are generally very cost prohibitive for large scale implementation. TxDOT desires to develop a metal guardrail system that meets the testing requirement of MASH TL-4.In this project, researchers will design and test a MASH TL-4 compliant metal guardrail system. First, the research team will develop three preliminary design concepts of the guardrail systems that are likely to meet MASH TL-4 requirements. They will select one of the three concepts for further development. Researchers will develop full-scale finite element models of the selected system and perform impact simulation under MASH TL-4 conditions. Using the results of these impact simulations, they will make further improvements to the guardrail design and make recommendations for the final design for crash testing. Researchers will then construct the guardrail system and perform MASH Test 4-12 (with single unit truck), Test 4-11 (with pickup truck) and Test 4-10 (with small car) to meet the testing requirements for MASH compliance of the new guardrail system.

• Record URL:
  https://library.ctr.utexas.edu/Presto/project=7019

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $288933
• Contract Numbers:

  0-7019

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Texas Department of Transportation

  11th and Brazos Streets
  Austin, TX  United States  78701

  Federal Highway Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Texas Department of Transportation

  11th and Brazos Streets
  Austin, TX  United States  78701
• Project Managers:

  Odell, Wade

• Performing Organizations:

  Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI)

  400 Harvey Mitchell Parkway South
  Suite 300
  College Station, TX  United States  77845-4375
• Principal Investigators:

  Sheikh, Nauman

• Start Date: 20190716
• Expected Completion Date: 20201230
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Barriers (Roads); Crash tests; Guardrails; Safety
• Subject Areas: Construction; Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01714849
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Texas Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: 0-7019
• Files: RiP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Aug 26 2019 3:21PM