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FROM:
Hanfeng Yin (1), Youye Xiao (1), Guilin Wen (1) and Hongbing Fang (2)
(1) Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China
(2) Department of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
“Design optimization of a new W-beam guardrail for enhanced highway safety performance”, Advances in Engineering Software, Volume 112, October 2017, Pages 154-164
ABSTRACT: As one of the most widely used safety devices on highways, W-beam guardrail plays an important role in protecting errant vehicles from entering dangerous zones or colliding with oncoming vehicles. As one of the most widely used safety devices on highways, W-beam guardrails play an important role in pro- tecting errant vehicles from entering dangerous zones or colliding with oncoming vehicles. One common issue with the traditional W-beam guardrails (TWG) is tire snagging which often occurred when the wheel of a striking vehicle entangled with a guardrail post. Tire snagging reduces the redirection perfor- mance of the guardrail and can result in serious injuries to the occupants. In this study, a new W-beam guardrail, named as “η-shaped W-beam guardrail (η-WG)”, was developed using nonlinear finite element simulations combined with metamodeling-based design optimization methodology. The simulation re- sults showed that tire snagging did not occur on the η-WG and the optimum design of the η-WG had an improved safety performance in vehicular crashes.
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