Laboratory Evaluation of Existing Breakaway Structures. Volume I. Executive Summary

摘要

A whole array of existing breakaway luminaire supports were tested using the FHWA soft-nosed pendulum test device. The pendulum was developed to simulate a subcompact car behavior. This nose was properly validated against full-scale test data. Due to unacceptable impact performance, modifications were made to cast aluminum transformer bases to reduce momentum change levels. Performance was greatly improved. The FHWA bogie test device was built and validated for use in testing dual-legged breakaway sign supports. Full-scale tests were run to provide full-scale validation data and to study off-center hit problems. This is the first of three volumes. Volume II contains the technical results of the study. Volume III contains the test data from all tests conducted under this study.