Numerical modeling and simulation of cable barriers under vehicular impacts on a sloped median

Cable barriers are flexible barrier systems that are commonly used as median barriers in the United States for their general effectiveness and low installation and maintenance costs. The current cable median barrier (CMB) adopted by the North Carolina Department of Transportation was previously evaluated on flat terrain and found to satisfy the requirements of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 350. Under in-service conditions (i.e., on a sloped median), the current CMB failed to stop small passenger cars in many incidents. The new roadside safety standard, Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH), recommends that CMBs be tested and/or evaluated on sloped medians. However, conducting full-scale crash tests on sloped median is extremely difficult and few experimental studies exist. In this study, finite element simulations were used to evaluate the performance of the current CMB design on a 6H:1V sloped median under MASH Test Level 3 conditions. To address the issue of vehicle underriding on the current CMB, two retrofit designs were developed and also evaluated on the sloped median. Two MASH compliant vehicles, a 1996 Dodge Neon and a 2006 Ford F250, were used to evaluate all three CMBs from both frontside and backside and with two initial impact points. The MASH exit-box criterion, MASH Evaluation criteria A, D, and F, vehicular responses, exit angles, and residual velocities were used to evaluate the CMB performance for structural adequacy, occupant risk, and post-impact trajectories. The simulation results showed that one of the retrofit designs could improve the CMB performance on a sloped median at MASH Test Level 3 conditions.