Computational simulations of road safety barriers using LS-DYNA

One of the major tasks in road transportation is to assure an adequate safety level for road users. To maintain and improve road safety, it is often necessary to install certain devices on the road that are intended to restrain vehicles and pedestrians from entering dangerous areas. The road safety barriers, designed according to the European standard EN 1317, provide certain levels of vehicle containment, properly redirect errant vehicles back on the road and provide guidance for pedestrians and other road users. This paper describes computational modelling of the safety barrier design and its behaviour under H1 (car and truck) vehicle impact conditions according to the EN 1317. The impact severity and the stiffness of the safety barrier have been evaluated with the explicit dynamic nonlinear analysis of full-scale computational models using the LS-DYNA code. Additionally, full-scale crash tests were performed and the measured experimental data were compared with the computational results. From the result comparison a very good agreement can be observed, which validates and justifies the use of computational simulations for further development of road safety barriers.