Protection performance of a novel anti-collision guardrail with recycled foamed concrete under vehicle collision

Highway guardrails play an important protective role in transportation. However, most traditional highway guardrails are poor at buffering and energy absorption, which cannot guarantee the safety of passengers in traffic accidents. To address this problem, recycled foamed concrete (RFC) was combined with thin-walled steel shells to prepare a novel recycled foamed concrete anti-collision guardrail (RFCG) in current study. The energy absorption and protection performance of the guardrail were evaluated by full-scale model impact tests and numerical simulations. The results revealed that compared with standard guardrail (SG), RFCG performed better in buffering and energy absorption, yielded less damage to vehicles, exhibited a peak impact force reduction rate of 54.46%, and reduced the manufacturing cost by 5.5% per kilometer. A finite element model for the guardrail was proposed. The numerical simulation results matched well with the experimental results and the accuracy of finite element model was validated.