An assessment of current maximum impact force models for anti-ram bollard systems subjected to truck impact

Abstract

Anti-ram bollard systems, which maintain a sufficient standoff in front of a protected area, can prevent vehicle bombs from approaching the area and thus reduce the damage from blast and debris. This article collects the current maximum impact force models for the collision between a vehicle and a barrier and presents an assessment of the applicability of these models for a truck crashing into an anti-ram bollard system. A database, which contains four available crash test results and 63 numerical simulation results, has been established for the evaluation. The assessment results show most of the current models have a poor accuracy and two existing models present a better performance for predicting the maximum impact forces. Further comparison indicates that the predictions by one better-performing model based on energy balance are more accurate, whereas the other better-performing model based on vehicle crush is more conservative. Therefore, the model based on vehicle crush is suggested for the design of anti-ram bollard systems.