IMPACT PERFORMANCE OF PULTRUDED BEAMS FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY APPLICATIONS

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is currently surveying compo site materials for use as roadside safety structures. The primary appl ication under consideration is a composite roadside safety rail (i.e. composite barrier system). A roadside rail system must have suitable c haracteristics to contain and redirect errant, out-of-control vehicles . While at the same time, the structure must be crashworthy or 'forgiv ing' to vehicle occupants. The objective of this study is to present t he findings from an iterative design process to optimize the impact pe rformance of pultruded beams. A series of impact and quasi-static test s on several glass fiber-reinforced composite beams having both open a nd closed cross sections have been conducted as a part of this process . These tests have built upon previous FHWA studies which have investi gated the impact and static behavior of pultruded composites. The resu lts obtained for maximum strength and energy absorbing characteristics from this study are being applied to the development of a full scale prototype guardrail. The beams tested were all standard pultruded sing le or multi-cell tube sections manufactured by Creative Pultrusions, I nc. Several of the beams also had two outer layers of Fabmat 0-90 glas s woven roving applied by a hand lay-up procedure. Both polyester and vinylester beams were tested. The beams were simply supported and appr oximately one-third the size of a conventional roadside rail section. The impact testing was conducted at the FHWA Turner-Fairbank Highway R esearch Center in McLean, Virginia. Both impact and quasi-static tests were conducted under identical boundary end conditions. (C) 1998 Publ ished by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.