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Abstract
Timber post guardrail systems have been utilized in several regions of the U.S. due to their beneficial energy absorbing characteristics during vehicle impacts. These posts are not routinely inspected and replacement decisions are rather arbitrary. The Federal Highway Administration recently placed emphasis on new asset management strategies that actively assess condition of all highway structures. This paper describes a project aimed to develop inspection protocols for embedded timber guardrail post systems. Pulse-echo acoustic techniques were utilized to measure the soundness of the embedded portion of several timber guardrail posts. Field tests were conducted on both retired and new posts in-service. Laboratory tests for cantilevered post strength were also conducted on salvaged posts after removal from service. The preliminary results indicate that pulse-echo acoustic testing shows potential as an effective nondestructive method of inspecting guardrail post in-service.
Keywords
Roads,
guard fences,
inspection,
wood poles,
testing,
red pine,
utilization,
white pine,
nondestructive testing,
poles,
posts,
small timbers,
smallwood,
small diameter timber,
guardrails,
roundwood,
pulse-echo,
acoustic
Citation
Wacker, James P.; Wang, Xiping; Kretschmann, David E.; Rammer, Douglas R. 2010. Nondestructive evaluation of timber highway guardrail posts. In: Proceedings of the 11th World Conference on Timber Engineering, 2010 June 20-24, Riva Del Garda, Italy [electronic resource]. [S.l. : s.n.], 2010: [1 CD ROM]: [6] p.
