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Safer Roadside Crash Walls Would Limit DecelerationThe figure depicts the aspects of a proposed deceleration-limiting design for crash walls at the sides of racetracks and highways. The proposal is intended to overcome the disadvantages of both rigid barriers and kinetic-energy-absorbing barriers of prior design. Rigid barriers can keep high-speed crashing motor vehicles from leaving roadways and thereby prevent injury to nearby persons and objects, but they can also subject the occupants of the vehicles to deceleration levels high enough to cause injury or death. Kinetic-energy-absorbing barriers of prior design reduce deceleration levels somewhat, but are not designed to soften impacts optimally; moreover, some of them allow debris to bounce back onto roadways or onto roadside areas, and, in cases of glancingly incident vehicles, some of them can trap the vehicles in such a manner as to cause more injury than would occur if the vehicles were allowed to skid along the rigid barriers. The proposed crash walls would (1) allow tangentially impacting vehicles to continue sliding along the racetrack without catching them, (2) catch directly impacting vehicles to prevent them from injuring nearby persons and objects, and (3) absorb kinetic energy in a more nearly optimum way to limit decelerations to levels that human occupants could survive.
Document ID
20110024022
Acquisition Source
Johnson Space Center
Document Type
Other - NASA Tech Brief
Authors
Schneider, William C.
(NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Locke, James P.
(NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 1, 2003
Publication Information
Publication: NASA Tech Briefs, December 2003
Subject Category
Man/System Technology And Life Support
Report/Patent Number
MSC-23178
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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