Impact Analysis using Numerical Simulation

Woodrail needed to test the road barrier with the motorcyclist protection system installed for:

• car and bus impact conditions
• the consequences of a human impact on the modified road barrier

EnginSoft  provided consultancy in extending the certification of the barrier to the new configuration with the motorcyclist protection system installed. This was efficiently achieved using numerical simulation with a significant cost reduction compared to physical testing. The study included:

• simulation of car and bus impact scenarios
• an adapted numerical dummy model provides biometric results including head acceleration and neck moments

Although the simulations were quite demanding from a computational standpoint we ran them within hours exploiting the EnginSoft Cluster and other in-house high performance computing resources.

Thanks to the results obtained through this study, the Woordrail safety barrier was approved as a Level I protection system for motorcyclists following the UNE135900 code.

Comparison of total plastic strain and wheels trajectory with and without the motorcyclist protection system installed