The Wire Rope Safety Fence Project was done for Brifen Canada.
Brifen wire rope safety fence is an unrivalled safety barrier system used on highways and motorways all around the world.
Heavy vehicle impact
on M4 Motorway, Sydney
The development of BRIFEN WRSF has been on going since 1970. This has involved in excess of 20 full scale crash tests (ie 626 metres between the anchorages) and many more crash tests over short distances. The vehicles involved have been sedans and American pick-up trucks of gross weight 750kg class, 900kg class, 1500kg class and 2000kg class.
Brifen WRSF
Alice Springs
To ensure BRIFEN WRSF acceptance worldwide, the testing carried out has been in accordance with:
The UK Highway Agency Specification TD32, (in the UK)
The European CEN Specification, (in France, Sweden and the UK)
The American NCHRP350 Level 3 Specification, (in the UK and USA)
BRIFEN has been fully tested at 1.2m, 2.4m and 3.2m post spacing in the 4 wire rope system. BRIFEN 3 wire rope system has been tested in both Sweden and the UK at 2.4m and 3.2m post spacing.
Based on the information provided by Brifen Canada FEA Engineering set up advanced mechanical event simulations to predict the impact between vehicles and wire rope safety fence potentially replacing real crash tests.
The parameters controlled by virtual testing environment are the impact angle, vehicle mass and speed, cable pretensioning, distance between the posts, post size and cable geometrical arrangement.
The output values are: axial force and axial stress in cables, impact shear force and impact stress in posts.
