Nonlinear collision analysis of heavy trucks onto steel highway guard fences

The design specifications of guard fences in Japan were reexamined and the revisedspecifications were implemented from April 1999. Because of the huge consumption in time and cost totest the performances of full-scale guard fences in the field, some assumptions are adopted whilemodifying the design specifications, and numerical analyses are necessary to confirm the impactperformance and safety level of new types of steel highway guard fences. In this study, the finite elementmodels are developed for the heavy trucks and steel highway guard fences to reenact their behaviors, andthe solution approach is carried out using nonlinear dynamic analysis software of structures in threedimensions (LS-DYNA). The numerical simulation results are compared with the full-scale on-site testingresults to verify the proposed analysis procedure. The collision process is simulated and it is also madepossible to visualize the movement of the truck and the performances of guard fences. In addition, theenergy shift of the truck kinetic energy to the truck and guard fence Internal energy, and the energyabsorption of each guard fence component are studied for the development of a new design methodologyof steel highway guard fences based on the energy absorption capacity.