Roadside Hardware Safety Performance

Background

Roadside hardware, such as traffic and work zone barriers, bridge railings, and crash cushions, prevent vehicles from leaving the road at dangerous locations. Crash testing of a large variety of vehicles into this hardware, as a means of optimizing the hardware design, is extremely expensive, often costing approximately $500,000 and 10,000 person-hours per test. The increasing diversity of automobiles and trucks, as well as the advent of the next generation of vehicles, such as hybrids, electrics, and fuel cell automobiles, and the use of more sophisticated occupant dummies ($120,000 per dummy) will add significantly to future crash testing costs.

Role of High-Performance Computing

High-performance computing environments can simulate the complex interaction between vehicle and roadside hardware. The results can be viewed using high-fidelity visualization and animation environments, such as in virtual reality. Because roadside hardware is sensitive to vehicle characteristics (mass and height of center of gravity), bumper and hood geometry, and roadside geometry (slopes, embankments, ditches, etc.), "crashworthiness" simulations help to minimize the construction of expensive prototypes and the experimental verification of product designs. More simulations can be performed that produce results in a shorter amount of time.

Side-by-side comparison of a full-scale crash test with a computer simulation, performed by the National Crash Analysis Center's (NCAC's) Highway Safety and Infrastructure Group. Using TRACC's high-performance cluster computer, researchers at USDOT funded organizations, NCAC and TRACC can perform similar simulations using much less computing time.

Performance of roadside hardware simulation using LS-DYNA® by the Texas Transportation Institute.

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.- Computational Structural Mechanics Engineer