Advisory Committee Chair
Nasim Uddin
Advisory Committee Members
Lee Moradi
Ian Edward Hosch
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2017
Degree Name by School
Master of Civil Engineering (MCE) School of Engineering
Abstract
According to published data, three million human injuries and deaths occur annually because of motor vehicle crashes (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). To help lessen the toll of this problem, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has set a goal to improve the safety of roadways. One way to achieve this goal is increasing the use of the LS-DYNA finite element code in cash testing to model three-dimensional motor vehicle crashes. The objective is to protect the vehicle occupants from severe injury by making roadside safety structures more crashworthy. Reinforced concrete is one important part of bridges, barriers, and guardrail materials. The roadside safety community supplements measured crash test data with LS-DYNA simulations performed on the computer. Use of the LS-DYNA software provides other benefits as well, such as: Increased Visibility: By using the LS-DYNA software, it is possible to view the contact between the crashing motor vehicle and the roadside safety structure from any angle, any position and one frame at a time. Quantitative Data: Values of deformations, loads, and stresses at any part of the safety structure can be quantitatively determined at any time during the collision process. Design Optimization: Roadside safety structures can be improved in a cost-effective manner to obtain the optimum safety in crashworthy roadside structures. In addition to these advantages, however, there is a note of caution about implementing these simulations in reality. After completing the preliminary roadside safety structure model on the computer, researchers must test the model by creating a virtual motor vehicle crash in the structure, and the virtual crash must mimic a real-world crash test. In this thesis, our objective is to simulate the reinforced concrete under the impact load in the LS-DYNA software. It is also planned that this project will compare the response of the beams in the field test to LS-DYNA model under different impact velocities. This research project contains two parts, based on the mentioned cautions to fulfill the comparison in reality and virtual world: In part one, a bogie vehicle has been constructed and made for testing at the Barber Laboratory for Advanced Safety Education Research (BLASER) in Leeds, Alabama. Some reinforced concrete beams have designed and made for the fabrication of the 3-point bending mechanisms, including a bogie head and the cantilever supports for the field test. Regarding part two, the same size beam has been modeled with the same reinforcement (longitudinal and shear) with beam elements and nodes consistent with the solid element nodes of concrete in the LS-DYNA software.
Recommended Citation
Pahlevannejad, Amin, "Testing and Simulation of Reinforced Concrete Beams under Impact Loading" (2017). All ETDs from UAB. 2649.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/2649