Development of an Energy Absorbing End Terminal for Open Box Beam Guardrail

An energy absorbing end terminal was developed for use with the European box beam guardrail system. The European box beam rail sections have an open architecture that is different from what is used in North America. The overall design effort utilized finite element simulation, individual component testing using the bogie and pendulum, and performance validation by full scale vehicle crash testing. The design process involved addressing several individual component performance issues. Of these were the design of an extruder head, splice connections for attaching adjacent rail segments, the post to rail attachment connection and anchorage of the rail. The research approach and results are presented in this paper.