Abstract
Guardrails, consisting of soil-embedded piles tied with a rail, are safety barriers that are installed along highways to shield errant motorists from roadside hazards and to minimize the risk of serious injuries. Soil resistance plays a crucial role in the way that guardrails perform when impacted by vehicles. Although the consequences of guardrail system failures are tragic, little is known on the dynamic impact characteristics of soil and soil-pile interaction under impact loading. Thus, research was conducted to investigate the load-deflection behavior of a single pile under impact through dynamic large-scale component testing and numerical simulation using LS-DYNA. Baseline dynamic tests were performed on a steel W6x16 pile embedded in crushed limestone soil impacted by a surrogate bogie vehicle. Test results were used to develop a simplified numerical model of soil-pile system when impacted by a vehicle. The validated model was then compared to full-scale crash test data. The proposed soil modeling method accurately represented soil and pile behavior in component tests and full-scale vehicle crash tests.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 269-280 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Geotechnical Special Publication |
| Volume | 2018-June |
| Issue number | GSP 292 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2018 |
| Event | 5th Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics Conference: Numerical Modeling and Soil Structure Interaction, GEESDV 2018 - Austin, United States Duration: Jun 10 2018 → Jun 13 2018 |
Keywords
- Dynamic Testing
- Finite Element Simulations
- Guardrails
- Highway Safety
- Impact Loading
- Soil-Pile Interaction
- and LS-DYNA
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Architecture
- Building and Construction
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology