Numerical study on the anti-collision performance of recycled foam concrete beam guardrail under vehicle collision

Recycled foam concrete (RFC) possessed excellent energy absorption capabilities and could be used in the anti-collision field. To address the insufficient anti-collision performance of existing guardrails, this paper presented a novel RFC beam guardrail by combining RFC with box-shaped steel shells. The quasi-static compressive tests and drop hammer impact tests were applied to analyze the static and dynamic mechanical characteristics of RFC with different densities and sand-cement ratios. Then, the vehicle collision performance of the RFC beam guardrail (RBG) and standard beam guardrail (SBG) was tested by LS-DYNA. The results showed that, compared with SBG, RBG had better guiding and energy absorption effects, reduced the peak vehicular acceleration by 44.15 % and the maximum guardrail displacement by 73.22 % during vehicle collisions, and mitigated the damage to the vehicle. Therefore, it is a viable way to utilize RFC to fabricate RBG, which could not only repurpose the construction and demolition wastes (CDW) but also acquire guardrails with enhanced anti-collision performance.