Engineering Commons^™

Evaluation Of Permanent Concrete Barriers To Mash 2016, Samuel Elias Hovde

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The objective of this research project was to develop evaluation criteria for permanent concrete barriers to MASH 2016 TL-3 and TL-4 without crash testing and then to evaluate permanent concrete barrier standards provided by the sponsoring agencies of the Midwest Pooled Fund Program. A literature review was conducted to determine evaluation criteria for stability, shape, strength, and anchorage, and a database of permanent concrete barrier crash tests was compiled. A survey was conducted to collect barrier standards from the members of the Midwest Pooled Fund Program, and barriers were selected and evaluated according to the determined methodology. A total of …

Development Of Post-To-Deck Connections For Use In A Mash Tl-4 Steel-Tube Bridge Rail, Pascual Mauricio

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A new post-to-deck connection was designed for mounting an upcoming Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Test Level 4 steel-tube bridge rail to the side of the bridge deck to limit impact load transferred to the deck and to minimize the propensity for deck damage during impacts. With preference for the bridge rail system to be compatible for use on all deck configurations, the Illinois and Ohio Departments of Transportation desired the new system to attach to bridge decks comprised of concrete slabs or precasted prestressed, concrete box-beam girders.

A new post-to-deck connection for a new MASH 2016 TL-4 steel-tube …

Improved Methodologies In Modeling And Predicting Failure In Aashto M-180 Guardrail Steel Using Finite Element Analysis - Phase I, Brandt M. Humphrey

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Steel guardrail systems have historic and widespread applications throughout the nation’s highways and roadways. However, catastrophic system failure can occur if the guardrail element ruptures, thus allowing an errant vehicle to pass uncontrolled through the system and potentially allow fractured ends to pierce the occupant compartment. To aid in the analysis and design of guardrail systems, further efforts are needed to develop and implement more reliable material failure criteria to predict and model guardrail steel rupture under all vehicle impact loading scenarios within impact simulation finite element method (FEM) software, such as LS-DYNA.

This Phase I study accomplished a number …