Standard testing content for highway guardrail

The factors in the performance testing environment of highway guardrail may lead to the unsuccessful performance of roadside safety hardware equipment. Guardrail terminals are typically developed and tested for selected ideal scenarios aimed at covering most but not all possible in-service collisions. For collision conditions similar to testing conditions, satisfactory performance can usually be expected. The performance of these devices depends on physical laws, vehicle stability, vehicle crashworthiness, and the on-site conditions of these real-world collisions. The greater the difference between the conditions and the testing conditions, the performance may exceed the ideal conditions.

Determine the performance conditions of all types of extruded highway guardrail  through analysis. The strip is divided into impact conditions and installation conditions. For impact conditions, the main performance conditions determined include side impact, frontal corner impact, and frontal shallow angle high-energy impact. For installation conditions, the determined performance conditions include:. Hardware installation, maintenance, and repair issues, rating issues, as well as placement of these installation conditions, can have adverse effects on the safety performance of these devices. Due to ideal side impact testing, shallow angle high-energy frontal impact and shallow angle frontal impact may lead to safety performance issues. However, the analyzed data evaluates the frequency of these situations occurring.

Due to the need for extensive development and testing, it usually takes many years to implement roadside safety hardware guidelines after meeting the widely used guidelines in the market. A large number of tested devices have been released and pushed to the market, so in order to encourage the development and installation of compatible devices, the border safety design community has transitioned to all newly installed highway guardrail standards.