Design and Crash Testing of a Surface-Mounted Median Guardrail System

This paper presents the development and crash testing of a new surface-mounted median guardrail for use on concrete pavements or bridge decks. The research team developed several preliminary design concepts of the median guardrail. Of these, one was selected for further development through component-level testing, simulation analysis, and full-scale crash testing. The researchers constructed a test installation of the new surface-mounted median guardrail and performed Manual for Roadside Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH) Test Level 3 testing, which involves performing Test 3-10 with a small passenger car and Test 3-11 with a pickup truck. In both tests, the surface-mounted median guardrail successfully contained and redirected the vehicle. The guardrail design passed the MASH evaluation criteria for both tests. The new surface-mounted median guardrail is ready for implementation by user agencies. It could be a good alternative to the much heavier concrete median barriers on bridges where reducing bridge loads is an important consideration and there is room to allow some deflection of the guardrail. Furthermore, because of a lack of median guardrails for use on concrete pavements, the new surface-mounted median guardrail could be a good cost-effective alternative to concrete median barriers placed on concrete pavements.