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Dynamic Evaluation of a Pinned Anchoring System for New York State's Temporary Concrete Barriers - Phase II

REPORT NUMBER

TRP-03-224-10

AUTHORS

Karla Lechtenberg (Polivka), Ronald Faller, John Reid, Dean Sicking

PUBLICATION DATE

2010-01-27

ABSTRACT

Temporary concrete barrier (TCB) systems are utilized in many situations, including placement adjacent to vertical drop-offs. Free-standing TCB systems are known to have relatively large deflections when impacted, which may be undesirable when dealing with limited space behind the barrier, such as on a bridge deck or with limited lane width in front of the barrier system. In order to allow TCB systems to be used in space-restricted locations, a variety of TCB stiffening options have been tested, including beam stiffening and pinning the barriers to the pavement. These pavement-pinning procedures have been considered time-consuming and may pose undue risk to work-zone personnel who are anchoring the barrier on the traffic-side face. Thus, a means of reducing TCB deflections while reducing risk to workers was deemed necessary. The primary research objectives were to evaluate the potential for reducing barrier deflections through the use of pinning every barrier section on the back-side toe of the New York State's New Jersey-shape TCBs and evaluate the barrier system according to the Test Level 3 (TL-3) criteria set forth in the Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH). The research study included one full-scale vehicle crash test with a Dodge Quad Cab pickup truck. Four 15 1/2-in. (394-mm) long, vertical steel pins were placed through holes on the back-side toe of each barrier section and inserted into drilled holes within the rigid concrete surface. Following the successful redirection of the pickup truck, the safety performance of the pinned anchoring system was determined to be acceptable according to the TL-3 evaluation criteria specified in MASH using the 2270P vehicle.