Timber Guardrail for Use on Roadway Bridges

摘要

Introduction Guardrail, as the most popular crash safety barriers, has been made of steel rails and steel posts historically on the basis of full-scale vehicle crash testing evaluation. But for bridge guardrail, usually, it is designed by assuming the vehicle impact forces as an equivalent static load that is applied to its elements. The current Japanese specification for bridge guardrail of type B specifies that rails, usually made of steel pipes, must be designed to resist a bending moment of 26 kN-m when the limit vehicle speed through the bridge is 60 km/h. Although this method can provide a sufficient strength of bridge guardrail to withstand the force of vehicle impact, it is unclear about the occupant ridedown acceleration with impacting of passenger car.