Computer programs have been used to model vehicles impacting steel safety fences and concrete barriers. These programs, when validated by comparison with full scale crash tests, should allow the effects of changing impact conditions or safety fence design to be investigated. The investigations reported in this paper used programs CRASH-D to compute the structural deformation of the fence, KRASH to predict the vehicle trajectory and CVS to predict occupant motion within the vehicle. Comparison between the simulated and test results for a car, a 16 tonne rigid lorry and a 38 tonne articulated lorry show that the simulated events are qualitatively correct but happen more quickly than occurred in the test. Work is continuing to improve the validation of the computer models. (A) This is paper 5 of the TRRL papers presented to the 1986 TRB annual meeting.
Abstract