Geometrical optimization and evaluation of the bridge safety guardrail

Abstract Lately, the rapid growth of traffic led to the construction of a new freeway bridge to ease the road congestion. This paper studied the crash behaviour of steel guardrails for semi-heavy traffic roads used on bridges. The guardrail structure is tested according to the SR EN 1317 standards at two velocity cases, corresponding to the TB 11 and TB 51 impact test description. To perform this evaluation study, the guardrail structure is first modelled in CAD environment software, respecting the commercial dimensions. The boundary conditions, the material properties assignment, and the load case creation are done by using dedicated FEA software. The obtained results are analysed and are proposed some design improvements to the base guardrail structure. The improved guardrail structure is tested under the same work conditions as the base structure. The conclusions of this research are presented in the last part of the paper.