Standards
The wire rope barrier has a unique property: the barrier catches the car
and allows it to “hang” in the wire ropes as if in a hammock, while the posts
are bent when the car collides with them and are released from the wires.
This produces
low acceleration in the car, which is caught by the road barrier and is not
thrown out into the carriageway again, which often happens when vehicles
collide with traditional road barriers.
Various standards have been developed, and these are described below.
EN 1317
Standards have been
developed within the European standardisation body, CEN (Commité Européen de
Normalisation), for how impact tests are to be performed on road safety
barriers. These road barrier impact
tests are described in CEN 1317, Road Restraint Systems. The CEN standard imposes functional demands
on the road road safety point of view.
According to the CEN standards, the road barriers are to be impact-tested
at different containment levels. The
elongation of the road barrier is also measured, and this determines its
working width. The road environment in which the barrier is to be constructed
determines the appropriate containment level as well as the permissible working
width. Furthermore, the CEN standard
requires that the risk of injury in a collision with the barrier is minimised
(injury risk class). This standard is
used in the European countries and is common in countries near to Europe as
well as in
NCHRP 350
NCHRP
stands for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, a program
developed by the Transportation Research Board of the National Research
Council,
Tests
Tests
performed in accordance with the standards above are carried out at various
approved testing institutes, such as VTI (the
SAFENCE wire rope barriers are
available in different models and designs depending on the customer’s
requirements regarding test standards, containment levels, working widths and
injury risk class. Blue Systems have
products tested for both EN 1317 and NHCRP 350.
Test
videos Central
and side barrier EN 1317 N2 Slope barrier EN 1317 Truck EN 1317 H1 NCHRP 350 TL3 NCHRP 350 TL3 NCHRP 350 TL4 NCHRP end
terminal
Crash test Blue Systems
slope barrier, VTI
TB 32,