Composites: Part A 32 (2001) 13291338

www.elsevier.com/locate/compositesa

Development of a pultruded composite material highway guardrail

L.C. Bank a,*, T.R. Gentry b
a

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Room 2206, 1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA b College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA Revised 1 May 2001; accepted 18 May 2001

Abstract Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials are being used to develop products for use as highway appurtenances, such as, sign supports, luminaire supports and guardrails (crash barriers). These structures, that are located alongside highways and roads, are subjected to vehicular impacts and must be designed to be `crashworthy' to ensure the safety of the driving public. This paper reviews an ongoing 10-year research and development program funded by the United States federal highway administration (FHWA) and the United States department of transportation (DOT) to produce a crashworthy composite material highway guardrail system. An overview of the research and development leading to a patented pultruded composite material guardrail is provided. q 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: E. Pultrusion; A. Plates; A. Fibres; Composite material

1. Introduction Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials have been developed or are under development for a number of products in the transportation industry for roadside structures. Major structures of this type include sign supports, lighting poles (luminaire supports) and guardrail systems. Smaller composite material structures used in transportation include highway delineators and small sign posts. These structures are placed alongside the roadway in the `rightof-way' [1] and must be designed to be crashworthy since they can be subjected to impacts by vehicles that accidentally leave the roadway. Appropriately designed composite material structures can be highly energy-absorbent, lightweight, durable and cost-effective alternatives to conventional metal, concrete or timber roadside structures. Composite material crashworthy `breakaway' lighting poles and utility poles are marketed by a number of companies (e.g. Shakespeare Composites and Electronics, Strongwell Inc., Creative Pultrusions Inc.) in the United States. A demonstration composite material sign support system was developed by Maunsell Structural Plastics in the United Kingdom [2]. Beginning in 1990 the US federal highway administration's (FHWA) design safety division began to study the possibility of using FRP composite materials for highway
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 11-608-262-1604; fax: 11-608-262-5199. E-mail address: bank@engr.wisc.edu (L.C. Bank).

safety structures, in particular, for highway guardrail systems [3,4]. As part of this effort the authors and co-workers have conducted fundamental and applied research and development studies to evaluate the feasibility of using pultruded composite materials to develop a composite material highway guardrail [517]. The goals of the research were to develop a composite material guardrail system that would be safer, more crashworthy, more energy absorbent, lighter-weight, easier to install, more durable and economically competitive with existing steel guardrails. This ongoing research and development effort has resulted in the recent manufacture of a commercially produced patented pultruded composite material guardrail [18]. The guardrail forms part of a guardrail system that includes posts, blockouts, connectors and an end-terminal. The guardrail system has not yet been approved for use in the United States and will undergo certication crash testing in the summer of 2001. Fig. 1 shows a 4.3 m installation of a demonstration section of the prototype pultruded composite material guardrail. The rail is attached to steel posts and blockouts at conventional 1.9 m spacing. 2. Background Roadside barriers and median barriers are designed to shield motorists from man-made or natural hazards and to redirect errant vehicles back onto roadways. Installation of these devices is warranted when the consequences of a vehicle impacting a barrier are deemed to be less severe

1359-835X/01/$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1359-835 X(01)00 086-0

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Fig. 1. Demonstration installation of the composite guardrail.

than the consequences of the vehicle leaving the roadway if the barrier did not exist [1]. The three major categories of barrier systems used in the United States, and throughout the world, are: (1) the exible system, (2) the semi-rigid system, and (3) the rigid system. The exible system permits an errant vehicle to travel up to 4 m into the horizontally displaced rail whilst going off the roadway until tension forces developed in the system are adequate to restrain or redirect the vehicle. The semi-rigid system allows up to 1 m of horizontal displacement before the vehicle is restrained or redirected. The rigid system allows no horizontal displacement and simply redirects the vehicle into trafc. The most common system in use today is a semi-rigid system that uses a steel w-beam guardrail with a steel or timber wide-ange post and blockout. This system is designated as a `G4(1S) guardrail system' by the US FHWA [1]. It allows for signicant deection and thus provides acceptable deceleration rates for vehicle occupants [19]. This guardrail system has enough stiffness and energy absorption capacity to limit displacements to around 1 m. Energy is absorbed through plastic exural deformation of the rail, through deformation of posts and blockouts and through plowing of posts through the soil. Preliminary research on pultruded composite materials was conducted to characterize the impact characteristics of commercially pultruded E-glass/vinylester or E-glass/ polyester composite materials [59]. These studies indicated that pultruded composite materials were viable for use in guardrail systems due to their pseudo-ductile failure characteristics especially when loaded in shear. In an independent but related effort in the early 1990s, a composite material E-glass/polyester guardrail similar in geometric design to the steel corrugated `w-beam' guardrail, was produced by a hand-layup open-molding process [3,4]. This guardrail was produced in limited `demonstration' quantities, has not been tested according to NCHRP 350 [19] requirements, and has not been approved for use by the FHWA. Computer simulations of composite guardrails of this type, that mimic the open-section geometry of

current steel guardrails, have been shown to be poor candidates for use of composite materials [20]. The objectives of the ongoing research and development program reviewed in this paper were to investigate the use of E-glass/thermosetting polymer composite material guardrails as potential replacements for steel w-beam guardrails. Issues of energy absorption, system displacement and deformation, damage localization, and longitudinal integrity through splice zones have been investigated. Economic and societal factors, including, initial cost, cost of maintenance, ease and speed of installation, long-term durability, and aesthetics are been studied in an ongoing US department of transportation (DOT) small business innovative research (SBIR) program. The current paper reports only on factors related to the structural design of guardrail. There are numerous structural advantages to a composite guardrail system. Even though polymer composite materials with high longitudinal ber content (characteristic of pultruded composites) are essentially linear elastic in longitudinal tension, it has been shown that signicant energy can be dissipated through the crushing, separation and tearing of composite materials [21,22]. Furthermore, this response of the composite material results in a shorter length of composite guardrail being damaged during a given impact event relative to a steel guardrail due to the more localized damage region. The composite guardrail, therefore, requires less rail replacement after a crash. Finally, since the composite guardrail contains continuous glass reinforcement along its length, this reinforcement (usually in the form of glass `rovings' in a pultruded composite) acts as an internal `cable' within the composite, and thus ensures that no overall longitudinal rupture of the rail occurs during an impact. The structural design research reported in this paper forms part of a comprehensive program that included prototyping of composite guardrails, quasi-static testing of prototype composite and steel guardrails [13], pendulum testing of prototype composite guardrails and conventional steel guardrails [1517], and simulation of composite and steel guardrails using the LS-DYNA explicit nite element code [10,11,13,14]. This paper reviews the development and quasi-static testing of a set of `rst-generation' prototype composite guardrails and the subsequent development and pendulum impact testing of a set of `second-generation' prototypes. The paper also discusses impact test simulation of the second-generation prototype composite material guardrails conducted with LS-DYNA [23]. The results of the pendulum impact tests and numerical simulations are reviewed. Based on the testing and analysis of the rst and second generation composite material guardrails described in this paper a pultruded composite material highway guardrail (Fig. 1), was manufactured by Creative Pultrusions, Inc. [18]. The pultruded guardrail has been subjected to quasi-static testing and will be subjected to vehicle crash testing using the standards developed and published as NCHRP 350 [19] in the summer of 2001.

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3. Static testing of prototype composite guardrails In order to investigate the effects of overall guardrail geometry, material properties and guardrail conguration a series of static tests were conducted on rst-generation designs of composite guardrails. All the rst generation designs had rectangular cross-sections and are designated in Fig. 2 as prototypes CGR1CGR6. Further details and the description of a number of other rst-generation prototypes are provided in [12]. Specimen CGR6 was a composite at plate produced by pultrusion. Specimens CGR1CGR6 were fabricated from standard `off-theshelf' pultruded proles produced with vinylester resin and E-glass ber reinforcement consisting of unidirectional rovings and randomly oriented continuous lament mats at a volume fraction of approximately 40%. The longitudinal modulus of the pultruded composite materials used in the guardrail prototypes ranged from 12 to 21 GPa. The tensile strength in the longitudinal direction ranged from 200 to 275 MPa while the tensile strength in the transverse direction ranged from 48 to 70 MPa [24]. The outer surfaces of specimens CGR1 and CGR4 were covered with a single layer of 24 oz/yard 2 0/90 bi-axial woven E-glass fabric. The bi-axial fabric was used to create a single contiguous multicellular prole from the individual tubes. This produced a guardrail prole that, for testing purposes, was expected to approximate the behavior of one produced in a single pultrusion operation with bi-axial

Fig. 3. Test xture with the composite guardrail prototype CGR2.

CGR1 CGR2 CGR3 CGR4 CGR5 CGR6

CGR10 CGR12 SGR1

Fig. 2. Prototype rst and second generation composite guardrails.

fabric integrally pultruded on the outer surface. The fabric was used to increase the transverse strength of the prototype guardrails. Single cell square pultruded tubular proles with sizes 50 50 3:5 mm, 25 25 3:5 mm (CGR1CGR4) and 200 300 6:2 mm (CGR5) were used to construct the various pultruded specimens (dimensions are length width wall thickness). In some cases a threecell multicellular prole, with outside dimensions of 50 150 mm and a wall thickness of 3.5 mm was used to replace three single cell 50 50 3:5 mm tubes. Since semi-rigid guardrail systems undergo large displacements during impact events, a test xture with equally large displacement capacity was required for quasi-static testing. A Tinius Olsen 600 kN universal test machine with 2 m of displacement capacity was selected for the testing. The test platen of the Tinius Olsen was tted with two wide ange beams and steel tube spacers to elevate the specimen being tested as shown in Fig. 3. The loading `nose' was a rigid 150 mm diameter steel tube similar to that used in pendulum impact tests. The guardrail prototypes were tested in a horizontal orientation, perpendicular to their normal upright orientation when installed in the eld. The rst-generation pultruded composite guardrails (specimens CGR1CGR6) explored a range of potential design parameters. These included the use of many small cells versus fewer large cells, the use of thin wall sections (less than 4 mm) versus thicker wall sections, the use of bonding versus bonding plus wrapping, and the replacement of the cellular concept with a tension-only membrane concept (specimen CGR6). All of the rst-generation composite guardrail specimens tested exhibited behavior that can be divided into three response regimes depending on how far the loading head traveled as shown in Fig. 4; (1) for the rst 100200 mm, the behavior of the rails was primarily exural with signicant damage accumulating at the point of contact between the specimen and the loading head, (2) between 200 and 300 mm of displacement the specimen unloaded due to rotation at the `hinge' formed at the loading point and yielding of the blockouts, (3) between 300 mm and the end of the test the rail began to stiffen in tension as the overall displacement of the

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Fig. 4. Loaddisplacement data for selected rst-generation specimens.

specimen in the xture increased to the point where tension membrane forces began to develop. The behavior of the composite guardrail prototypes with multiple cells CGR1 through CGR4 was quite similar. All four specimens exhibited an initial exural damage mechanism of crushing of the compression surface underneath the loading head, which was accompanied by a decrease in load. The initial failure in the guardrails with multiple cells occurred at a displacement of between 25 and 50 mm depending on the specimen. Flexural damage continued to spread throughout the specimen underneath the loading nose until the overall specimen thickness at the point of contact was reduced to a few centimeters. During the spread of exural damage, the L junctions (at corners) of the tubular components and the L and T (at wall intersections) junctions of the multicell components split, allowing the cell walls to act as individual plates in the vicinity of the loading nose. In all four specimens, exural damage was essentially complete by the time the loading head had traveled 200 mm. The continuous splitting of L and T junctions and the rupture of vertically oriented composite plates contributed signicantly to the large amount of energy dissipated in the exural damage region of 0200 mm. At a displacement of approximately 300 mm, the membrane action of the rail began to develop and the load began to climb. The stiffness of the rail/blockout system was nearly constant during loading from 300 to 570 mm. In all guardrail specimens that did not fail, the steel blockouts began to fail at a displacement near 500 mm. Fig. 4 shows the test data for specimen CGR3 which is representative of tests CGR1 through CGR4. Composite guardrail specimen CGR5 behaved differently from the specimens described previously. Early in the loading the vertical walls of the specimen failed completely in exure. At this point the load carried by the specimen dropped precipitously. Little tearing of L junctions occurred as the cross-head displacement entered into the tension

region. Finally, at a cross-head displacement of 480 mm, the specimen failed completely, separating into two halves. The relatively thick 6.3 mm walls of specimen CGR5 were unable to withstand the high exural strains, due to local curvature at the loading nose, and still resist the required tension membrane forces. To enable a direct comparison between the prototype composite guardrails and conventional steel w-beam guardrails, a steel w-beam guardrail (SGR1) was also tested in the static xture. Load versus displacement data for the steel guardrail is given in Fig. 4. The steel guardrail yields in exure at a load of around 25 kN. The energy absorbed (area under the loaddisplacement curve) by the steel and composite specimens is similar because the steel guardrail has a smooth yield plateau, while the composite guardrail fails progressively as various elements fail. Following the completion of the analysis of the rstgeneration prototypes a set of second-generation prototypes was designed. The second-generation prototype guardrails, CGR10 and CGR12 (shown in Fig. 2) were designed to build on the desirable behavioral characteristics identied in the rst-generation prototypes. These desirable characteristics included the progressive longitudinal tearing along the cell-wall junctions in the thin-walled (,4 mm) prototypes and reorientation of the vertical cell walls under the loading nose during the secondary loading regime which maintained the longitudinal integrity of the rail. In order to exploit these behavioral characteristics and to provide a design that was viable for a guardrail the following design modications were made in the second-generation prototypes. (1) The multiple layering of tubes, which was shown to be successful but was known to be difcult to manufacture in the pultrusion process, was replaced by tubes which have varying depth across the width of the guardrail. (2) The tubes were oriented across the width of the guardrail so that the deepest tubes were toward the edges and the shallowest

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50

1333

40

Load (kN)

30

20

10

CGR3 CGR10 SGR1 0 100 200 300 400 500 600

Displacement (mm)
Fig. 5. Comparison of loaddisplacement data.

tubes were in the center. The concave geometry obtained by this arrangement will `capture' the front bumper of a car on impact and prevent the vehicle from moving over or under the guardrail as it slides along and into the guardrail. (3) To ensure that the specimens acted as a single unit, all tubular members were bonded and fastened to a 3.2 mm thick pultruded plate at the rear face of the specimen. Self-tapping screws were used to pull the individual elements into alignment and to ensure a thin bond line during fabrication of the specimens. The behavior of the second-generation prototypes was similar to the rst-generation prototypes. No signicant difference in performance was observed in the wider version of the second generation prototype guardrail (CGR12). The response of specimen CGR10 is compared with that of a rst-generation specimen CGR3 and a steel rail (SGR1) in Fig. 5. It can be seen that CGR10 has a lower exural strength than specimen CGR3 in the initial exural region, however, the loaddisplacement curve for CGR10 is much

smoother than that of CRG3 and follows that of the steel guardrail more closely. The smooth pseudo-ductile curve is due to a more gradual and progressive failure of the secondgeneration rail in the non-linear regime. In the guardrail elements, it is preferable to have a relatively smooth loaddisplacement relationship as the vehicle moves into the guardrail, so that the deceleration rate of the vehicle does not change dramatically over the course of an impact event. It can also be seen that the amount of energy absorbed (area under the loaddisplacement curve) by CGR10 is very similar to that absorbed by the steel w-beam guardrail. 4. Impact testing of prototype composite guardrails Based on the successful results of the static tests on the second-generation prototypes, CGR10, was selected for full-scale pendulum impact testing. Impact testing of the composite guardrail prototypes was conducted at the federal outdoor impact laboratory (FOIL) at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center in McLean, Virginia, USA following their standard pendulum impact test procedures. Tests were carried out using a 880912 kg pendulum at impact velocities ranging from 10 to 35 km/h. Both `twopost' tests without end restraint and `cable-anchored' tests with cable anchor brackets added to increase the tension capacity of the test setup were conducted. Selected data from the composite guardrail pendulum tests is presented along with data from the steel w-beam guardrails tested in the same xture. Acceleration data were collected during the tests and velocity and displacement data were obtained by integration. The impact forces m a were determined from peak acceleration time histories, which were ltered at 300 Hz. Additional information on the testing setup and time histories from each of the experiments on the composite rails can be found in a FHWA report [16]. A total of

Fig. 6. Two-post pendulum impact test set up with prototype CGR10.

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5.00
Composite Prototype Guardrail (Average of 2 Tests) Steel W-Beam Guardrail (Average of 3 Tests)

0.00 Acceleration (gs)

-5.00

-10.00

-15.00

-20.00 0.00 0.05 Time (s) 0.10 0.15

Fig. 7. Cable-anchored pendulum impact test set up with prototype CGR10.

12.00 10.00

eight pendulum impact tests were conducted on the composite guardrail prototypes. A total of 13 pendulum impact tests were conducted on the steel guardrails [15,17]. The tests were conducted on the steel guardrails prior to testing the composite guardrails to debug the xtures and to develop a reliable benchmark for the subsequent composite guardrail testing and numerical simulation. The steel and composite guardrails tested in the two-post test xture, shown in Fig. 6, were capable of stopping the pendulum at low impact speeds (10 km/h). However, at an impact speed of 35 km/h, the guardrail to steel blockout connection consistently failed. However, it was recognized that the two-post did not provide adequate end restraint for the guardrail and was not representative of the eld installation [11]. As a consequence of this lack of restraint, the full tension capacity of the guardrails was not developed during the pendulum testing. To increase the capacity of the test xture, the cable anchor bracket was added and the rail was tied-back with a steel cable to a rigid steel post as shown in Fig. 7. Only results of the cable anchored impact tests are presented in this paper. The overall displacements of the cable anchored system were lower and the resistance mechanism was dominated by tension, not by exure as in the two-post tests [15,16]. During impact testing a steel guardrail resists the impact load by: (1) an initial exural damage phase that is accompanied by signicant tension in the guardrail; (2) an unloading/softening phase dominated by bending and twisting of the posts along with loss of tension in the rail; and (3) a nal stiffening phase where the rail and cable tension stop the pendulum [13]. The composite guardrail prototype also demonstrated this behavior, which was similar to that seen in the static testing described previously. In Fig. 8, the acceleration, velocity and displacement time histories are presented for the 35 km/h composite guardrail (CGR10 prototype) and the guardrail steel tests. Presentation of the test data in this format is typical for this type of

8.00 Velocity (m/s) 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 -2.00 -4.00 0.00 0.05 Time (s)
0.80 0.70 0.60 Displacement (m) 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.05 Time (s) 0.10 0.15
Composite Prototype Guardrail Steel W-Beam Guardrail

Prototype Composite Guardrail Steel W-Beam Guardrail

0.10

0.15

Fig. 8. Experimental time-history data for 35 km/h pendulum impact tests.

testing. For this test conguration two data sets were available for the composite guardrail (97P001 and 97P002) and three data sets were available for the steel w-beam guardrail (96P003, 96P004, and 96P006). The time histories in Fig. 8 show average data for the tests. The two composite and

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Fig. 9. Composite guardrail CGR10 following 35 km/h impact test.

three steel rail traces were very similar. Error bars are not shown in Fig. 8 in the interests of clarity. The acceleration time history shows that the initial exural resistance mechanism provides a momentary deceleration of approximately 15 g in the steel guardrail and about 19 g in the composite guardrail. The higher deceleration in the composite guardrail may be attributed to the high elastic exural stiffness E I of the composite prototype as compared to the steel w-beam. Both rails begin to soften at around 0.050 s. Because both rails begin to soften at the same time, it is likely that the loss of stiffness can be attributed to the exural and torsional rigidity of the post and blockouts, which were common to both sets of tests. At around 0.110 s, both rail types exhibit a second deceleration peak, of about 11 g in the steel guardrail and about 13 g in the composite guardrail. The guardrail is essentially in tension at this point and the end reactions are traveling almost entirely through the cables (as the blockouts are near separation from the rails at this point). The overall deections of the two guardrails are similar, approximately 0.62 m in the steel guardrail system and 0.66 m in the composite guardrail system. The damage observed in the steel guardrails included yielding of the steel, attening of the cross-section and, in some cases, partial tearing of the guardrail at the point of impact which are a function of the elastoplastic behavior of the cold-rolled steel used for guardrails. The damage observed in the composite guardrails included, splitting and tearing at the junctions, buckling of the cell walls, local crushing of cells and reorientation of cell walls. The energy dissipation in the composite guardrail comes from the splitting and tearing of the tubes used to create the overall cross-section. The splitting of the tubes occurs without the rupture of the longitudinal glass ber rovings, which must be preserved to keep the rail from separating. Additional energy dissipation comes from buckling of the thin tube walls in the vicinity of the impact. The splitting and tearing continues down the composite guardrail as the impact progresses, increasing the level of energy dissipation. Elements of the front face of the guardrail may rupture

Fig. 10. LS-DYNA model of composite guardrail.

during the impact event, leading to additional energy dissipation. All of these mechanisms were observed in the static testing of the CGR10 prototype. Fig. 9 shows a composite guardrail following an impact test at 35 km/h. The separation of the tubes and the longitudinal tearing at the junctions of the individual cells can be clearly seen at the point of impact. Rotation and deection of the steel posts as well as the overall integrity of the guardrail is observed (i.e. the pendulum is at rest and the guardrail has not failed globally). 5. Computer simulation of impact tests The non-linear explicit nite element code, LS-DYNA [23], was used to simulate the impact tests of the composite guardrail. The overall geometry of the half-symmetry LSDYNA model is shown in Fig. 10. Four-noded BelytchkoTsay shell elements were used throughout to model the surfaces of the guardrail. Nodal constrains called `spotwelds' were used to connect the separate surfaces of the composite tubes in the guardrail to allow for the separation at the junctions. Spotweld strengths were calculated using the transverse tensile strength and the in-plane shear strength of the pultruded composite material [21,22,25]. LS-DYNA provides a number of material models that allow for progressive failure in laminated composites. The

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Fig. 11. Animation sequence from nite element simulation of impact test.

material model used in this research was designated as MATERIAL_ENHANCED_COMPOSITE_DAMAGE (Material 54). Discussion of the numerous modeling issues needed to implement Material 54 in a LS-DYNA model is beyond the scope of this paper and are discussed elsewhere [14,25]. In Fig. 11, an animation sequence from LS-DYNA simulation of the 35 km/h cable-anchored pendulum impact test is shown. At 0.015 s, the pendulum has penetrated the plane of the front face of the guardrail and the spotwelds in the vicinity of the impact have released. At 0.030 s, part of the front face has ruptured at the line of symmetry, allowing a small strip of material to separate from the guardrail. At this point there is little global deformation in the model; the pendulum is still advancing into the cells of the rail. At 0.045 s the pendulum has proceeded through the front face of the guardrail and has contacted the back face of the guardrail. The posts and blockouts have begun to rotate (in torsion) as the guardrail translates rearwards. Some spotwelds in the vicinity of the blockout have begin to fail in shear at this point. At 0.060 s the entire guardrail has displaced horizontally due to general torsional/exural yielding at the base of the steel posts. Resistance to pendulum motion has dropped at this time, which corresponds to the unloading/softening phase introduced earlier. At 0.090 s the system has re-stiffened and the rearward translation of the post ceases. The cables have re-tensioned and the cable and guardrail are acting together as a tension membrane. Little additional deformation occurs between 0.090 and 0.120 s when the pendulum has stopped due to the tension action of the guardrail. The rear of the pendulum rises and then falls as the pendulum swings away from the guardrail. The results shown in Fig. 11 and described above can be compared qualitatively test results for the impact tests in Section 4. The events occurring at times 0.015, 0.045, 0.090, and 0.120 s can be seen to correspond to phenomena observed during the testing. Fig. 12 shows a comparison between the pendulum impact tests and the nite element simulations of the time histories of acceleration, velocity and displacement. Predicted velocity and displacement data were close to the impact test time histories, but acceleration data was less well correlated. The major discrepancy between the two acceleration traces is the low deceleration exhibited by the simulation in the rst or exural phase of the behavior. The LS-DYNA simulation predicts a peak deceleration of 13 g whereas in the experiments, a deceleration of 19 g was observed. This can be attributed to two phenomena. First, it is possible that the model of the steel post and blockout and their bolted connections is too soft, allowing them to torque and translate rearwards more early in the simulation than they do in the experiment. A similar but less severe difference was observed in earlier LS-DYNA models of the steel w-beam guardrail experiments. It is also clear from the simulation that more damage, located at the front face composite guardrail and adjacent to the blockout, is evident

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0.00

Acceleration (gs)

-5.00

-10.00

-15.00
Composite Prototype Guardrail (Ave rage of 2 Te sts) LS-DYN A Simulation

-20.00 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 Time (s) 0.10 0.12 0.14

12.00 10.00 8.00 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 -2.00 -4.00 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 Time (s)
0.80 0.70 0.60
Displacement (m)

Velocity (m/s)

Composite Prototype Guardrail Te st LS-DYNA Simulation

0.10

0.12

0.14

0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 Time (s) 0.10 0.12 0.14
Prototype Composite Guardrail Tes t LS-DYNA Simulation

Fig. 12. Comparison between impact test and nite element simulation results.

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L.C. Bank, T.R. Gentry / Composites: Part A 32 (2001) 13291338 site materials for use in roadside safety barriers, Report FHWA-RD92-090, FHWA, US, 1994. Svenson AL, Hargrave MW, Bank LC. Impact performance of glass bre composite materials for roadside safety structures. Advanced composite materials in bridges and structures. Montreal, Canada: Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, 1992. p. 55968. Svenson AL, Hargrave MW, Bank LC. Impact behavior of pultruded composites, proceedings of the 48th Annual SPI Conference, Composites Institute, Society for the Plastics Industry, Cincinnati, OH, 811 February 1993, session 21-D. p. 16. Svenson AL, Hargrave MW, Bank LC, Ye BS. Data analysis techniques for impact tests of composite materials. ASTM J Testing Evaluation 1994;22(5):43141. Svenson AL, Hargrave MW, Tabiei A, Bank LC, Tang Y. Design of pultruded beams for optimization of impact performance. In: 50th Annual SPI Conference Proceedings, 10-E. 1995. p. 17. Bank LC, Gentry TR, Yin J, Lamtenzan JD. DYNA3D simulations of pendulum impact tests on steel guardrails. In: Mahmood HF, Baccouche MR, editors. Crashworthiness and occupant protection in transportation systems, AMD-Vol. 218. New York: ASME, 1996. p. 5164. Bank LC, Yin J, Gentry TR. Pendulum impact tests on steel w-beam guardrails. ASCE J Transp Engng 1998;124(4):31925. Gentry TR, Bank LC, Yin Y, Lamtenzan JD. Damage evolution and progressive failure in composite material highway guardrails. Crashworthiness and occupant protection in transportation systems, AMDVol. 218. New York: ASME, 1996. p. 7989. Gentry TR, Bank LC. Finite element modeling and model verication of steel w-beam guardrails subject to pendulum impact loading. Transportation research record, No. 1647, 1999, Washington, DC. p. 14757. Gentry TR, Bank LC. Pendulum impacts into FRP composite guardrail prototypes: testing and simulation. Transportation Research Board 79th Annual Meeting Paper No. 000481. 2000. Brown CM. Pendulum testing of xed-end w beam guardrail: foil test numbers 96P001-96P006, Report No. FHWA-RD-97-078, Federal Highway Administration, 1997. Brown CM. Pendulum testing of an FRP composite guardrail: FOIL test numbers 96P019 through 96P023, 97P001 and 97P002. Report FHWA-RD-98-017, Federal Highway Administration, 1998. Sevenson AL, Brown CM. Pendulum impact testing of steel w-beam guardrail: foil test numbers 94P023-94P027, 94P030 and 94P031. Report FHWA-RD-98-018, Federal Highway Administration, 1998. Bank LC, Gentry TR. US Patent, Composite material highway guardrail having high impact energy dissipation characteristics, 6,149,134, 2000. NCHRP 350, Recommended procedures for the safety performance evaluation of highway features, Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC, 1993. Nemes JA, Bodelle G. Simulation of vehicle impact on steel and composite highway guardrail structures. Crashworthiness and occupant protection in transportation systems, AMD Vol. 210/BED Vol. 30. New York: ASME, 1995. p. 17990. Palmer DW, Bank LC, Gentry TR. Simulation of progressive failure of pultruded composite beams in three point bending using LSDYNA3D. In: Proceedings of the SPI/ICE 97, Nashville, TN, 27 29 January 1997, Session 14-C. p. 112 Palmer DW, Bank LC, Gentry TR. Progressive tearing failure of pultruded composite box beams: experiment and simulation. Compos Sci Technol 1998;58(8):13539. Livermore software, LS-DYNA, Livermore, California, 2001. Creative pultrusions design guide, creative pultrusions, Alum Bank, Pennsylvania, 1998. Smith JR, Bank LC, Plesha ME. Preliminary study of the behavior of composite material box beams subjected to impact. In: Sixth LSDYNA Users Conference 2000 Simulation 2000, Dearborn, MI, 911 April 2000. p. 11-111-16.

in the simulation than in the experiments. The spotwelds in the vicinity of the blockout appear to be failing prematurely, allowing the rail to lose stiffness in the model where it does not in the experiments. The use of damping, the averaging of spotweld break forces over multiple time steps, and the addition of a small amount of spotweld plasticity is being considered to alleviate this problem. The overall behavior of the model, as evidenced by the velocity and displacement traces, is reasonable. It is anticipated that better agreement between these simulations and the experiments can be achieved, and that future modeling will explore the impact of vehicles into long lengths of the composite prototype guardrails. However, two key indices that describe guardrail performance and the predictive capability of the nite element model: the predicted time for the pendulum to stop and the overall horizontal displacement of the pendulum into the guardrail are within 5% of the values observed in the experiment. 6. Conclusions The research and development leading to the production of a prototype pultruded composite material highway guardrail has been reviewed in this paper. The composite prototype guardrails described in this paper have demonstrated a structural capacity similar to that of the current steel w-beam guardrails. The energy absorption of the composite guardrail comes not from elasticplastic behavior in the material, but rather from the controlled tearing and splitting of the composite material, which occurs without separation of the rail. The ability for the composite guardrail to withstand signicant inelastic deformation and severe local curvatures supports a conclusion that the rail will remain intact under full-scale impacts like those described in NCHRP 350. Acknowledgements This material is based on work supported by the Federal Highway Administration under Cooperative Agreements DTFH61-92-X-00012, DTFH61-95-X-00024 and the US DOT under contract DTRS57-98-C00080. Any opinions, ndings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the view of the Federal Highway Administration. References
[1] Roadside design guide, American association of state highway and transportation ofcials (AASHTO), Washington, DC, 1989. [2] Robbins J. Plastic gantry gets M25 Trial, NCE. 1992. p. 26. [3] McDevitt CF, Dutta PK. New and recycled plastic composites for roadside safety hardware. Plast Building Constr 1993;18(2):612. [4] Dutta PK. Investigations of plastic composite materials for highway safety structures, CRREL Report 98-7, US Army Corps of Engineers, 1998. [5] Svenson AL. Impact characteristics of glass ber-reinforced compo-

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