Analysis of the impact of a detached heavy trailer against a concrete median barrier

Median barriers are road safety devices intended to prevent vehicles from crossing into opposite lanes, bringing them back to the right direction. However, statistics demonstrate that the current concrete barrier designs can cause the rollover of the impacting vehicle. In this context, a case of a vehicle-median barrier impact is represented by a detached trailer that hits a barrier of common design. This impact involves a given sloped surface which the impacting vehicle may climb. In this paper, a 10 degree-of-freedom (dof) model is used to simulate the impact of a detached trailer against a median barrier. While the results show that the rollover can occur as a result of the impact, negligible variations of the maximum roll angle attained are observed when changing the impact angle and the vehicle speed. Future research efforts should be made to assess the heavy vehicles rollover potentials of current median barriers designs.