Crash Testing And Evaluation Of The New York State Box Beam To Weak Post W Beam Transition PDF Download

The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) desired to crash test an end terminal connected to box beam in a “zig zag” formation to evaluate its safety performance under the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH 2016) criteria. Test no. NYT-1 was conducted on the “zig-zag” box beam end terminal according to MASH 2016 test designation no. 3-31. The system consisted of standard box beam guardrail supported by steel posts with a “zig-zag” box beam terminal. The posts were spaced at 72 in. (1,829 mm) at center. The top rail mounting height of the box beam rail was 27 in. (686 mm) from the ground line. In test no. NYT-1, the vehicle impacted the system at 62.7 mph (101 km/h) at an angle of 0.1 degrees, resulting in a kinetic energy of 655.5 kip-ft (889 kJ). During impact, the vehicle first contacted the end terminal assembly, then travelled through the zig-zag box beam. This action caused rail section nos. 1 through 3 to deflect downstream and the rail section nos. 4 through 13 to deflect to the traffic side of the system. Post nos. 1 through 13 all deflected downstream, and post no. 14 rotated downstream. Once the vehicle made contact with the straight box beam between post nos. 8 and 9, the rail section snagged on the vehicle. This behavior caused the right fender, the right-front door, and the front of the right-rear door to tear away from the frame. The right-front window also shattered as a result of the snag event. As a result, test no. NYT-1 did not successfully meet the evaluation criteria for MASH 2016 test designation no. 3-31. Per guidance from NYSDOT, no further crash tests were conducted on the system.