Awarded as the best online publication by CIDC

How do steel beam barriers (e.g. tension/untensioned beam barrier and open box barrier) function to contain vehicles upon crashing?

Steel beam barrier consists mainly of horizontal rails and vertical posts. When a vehicle hits the steel beam barrier, the kinetic energy is resolved in three components, namely vertical, normal to barrier and parallel to barrier. The vertical and normal components of kinetic energy are dissipated through deformation and bending of beam and supporting posts. As such, the remaining component (i.e. parallel) guides the vehicle back to the carriageway in a direction parallel to the barrier.

Advertisements

This question is taken from book named – A Self Learning Manual – Mastering Different Fields of Civil Engineering Works (VC-Q-A-Method) by Vincent T. H. CHU.

Share this post

Kanwarjot Singh

Kanwarjot Singh is the founder of Civil Engineering Portal, a leading civil engineering website which has been awarded as the best online publication by CIDC. He did his BE civil from Thapar University, Patiala and has been working on this website with his team of Civil Engineers.

If you have a query, you can ask a question here.

One comment on "How do steel beam barriers (e.g. tension/untensioned beam barrier and open box barrier) function to contain vehicles upon crashing?"

Ankit Singh says:

plz provide diagrammatically explanations in your answers which are easy to understand.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ask a question