Researchers at the University of Nebraska on Wednesday tested a newly designed and significantly shorter concrete roadside barrier to see how it performs in a crash.
That test could lead to safer, more cost effective barriers throughout the United States. Researchers crashed an 80,000-pound fully loaded tractor-tanker into a 62-inch-tall barrier at the Lincoln Airport. The high-speed safety experiment was part of an effort by the university’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility to create thinner, shorter barriers that are able to keep tanker trucks upright and prevent disastrous spills.
Cody Stolle, research assistant professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, says computer simulations showed that at the new height more of the tanker would roll over the top of the barrier but that the barrier would be tall enough to “upright the vehicle and prevent it from other potentially dangerous outcomes — like going over on its side or rupturing the tank and causing a large spill on the roadway.”
He says the barrier test went exactly as predicted. “For the purposes of containment, this test was phenomenal,” Stolle says. “This would have prevented the vehicle from penetrating past that line and that barrier into opposing traffic or off of a bridge. The barrier performed exactly as it should.”
The research team will analyze the crash data as it becomes available and will then work with transportation departments to get the design accepted as a standard design. Once that is done, the bid letting process for road installation would begin. That process could take six to 18 months, Stolle says.
(Photos: UNL)