Computational and experimental crash analysis of the road safety barrier

The paper describes the computational analysis and experimental crash tests of a new road safety barrier. The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate a full-scale computational model of the road safety barrier for use in crash simulations and to further compare the computational results with real crash test data. The impact severity and stiffness of the new design have been evaluated with the dynamic nonlinear elasto-plastic analysis of the three-dimensional road safety barrier within the framework of the finite element method with LS-DYNA code. Comparison of computational and experimental results proved the correctness of the computational model. The tests have also shown that the new safety barrier assures controllable crash energy absorption which in turn increases the safety of vehicle occupants.