IL152965A - Hinged guard rail - Google Patents

Description

Improved Hinged Guard Rail isiora man DTID ΠΪ?ΓΏ Improved Hinged Guard Rail Field of the invention The present invention relates to road guardrails, and particularly to devices that anchor the rails to the road's shoulders and devices that gradually absorb the energy of a crashing vehicle onto the guardrail.

Goals of the invention It is meant to correct some of the shortcomings of the currently used guardrails, so to enhance safety on the roads. Four of the shortcomings are described below.

Description of shortcomings of prior art 1) As is well known and seen at nearly every road side, the present, common guardrails are made of W shaped steel rails, fastened to steel or wooden posts, the posts are driven into the far side of the road shoulders in a vertical position. There usually are U shaped steel pieces that connect the rails to the posts.

In many stretches of roads, the shoulders are sloping down to ditches. When the road is on hillside or a mountain, the terrain outside of the down side shoulder is sloping downhill.

In these and similar cases, the posts are not well secured, because the outer, sloping down part of the shoulder, does not support them as well as a horizontal one. The outer side should take the impact of a crashing vehicle, but its capacity is less than desired because of the lesser support of the sloping substrate. 2) A general characteristic of the common guardrails is that in case of a high energy vehicle crash onto them, they will move outside and down, as the posts are bent, or uprooted, or broken. The downward movement is very dangerous, as it lets the vehicle overturn the rail, and fall down from the shoulder. 3) Another drawback of the present guardrails is the lack of a built in mechanism for gradual slowing the crashing vehicle. A very short-time deceleration of the vehicle causes high energy, dangerous impact of the persons in it on the objects in front of them, and serious damages. 4) Yet another dangerous situation happens when a vehicle is crashing onto the guardrail with somewhat lower energy. In that case the guardrail may not bend down, but react and rebound the vehicle back, in many cases to the other side of the road, head on with vehicles coming from the opposite direction.

It is the aim of the present invention to correct these drawbacks with the properties and design of new guardrails that are described in the following paragraphs.

A number of patented inventions are answering some of these drawbacks.

Patents US3844538; US4063713; US4138093; US4739971; US5152507; W09953141; JP9170212; JP9100517 and JP2001115423, describe methods to make the rails and/or the posts elastic, or covered with an elastic material in order to lessen the outcome of the crash onto the rail, to the vehicle. They do not address drawbacks No. 1), 2) and 4).

Patents US4722513; US5169127 and EP0924346 describe methods of using wooden guardrails, with no references to the mentioned drawbacks.

Patents JP9132906 and US5797591 describe methods to strengthen the anchoring of the posts with blocks of concrete and with steel cables connecting the posts.

Patents EP0952253 and US4330106 describe means that lessen the damages to vehicles crashing on the edge of a guardrail.

Patent EPO1061179 describes a double rail guardrail.

Patent EPO780518 describes plastic covers on sharp edges in guardrail in order to lessen damages to crashing vehicles.

Patents WO0034585 and British 1066988 Describe replacements for the posts. They comprise horizontal base and arm, the upper edge of the arm holds the rail and the lower edge is connected to the base with a hinge. The arm with the rail can be pushed outward of the road against resilient device, such as spring, shock absorber, rubber block or similar. While these inventions may provide answers to some drawbacks, their application seems to be prohibitively expensive.

Shlomo Lebel 3 152965Λ2, Summary of the invention The present invention of an Improved Guard Rail System is meant to be installed along the side(s) of roads. It consists of a longitudinal rail and a multitude of supporting assemblies, anchored to ground shoulders of roads, supporting the rail.

A novel attribute of this invention is the two membered structure in each supporting assembly. These members are connected to one another with a hinge, like the hands of a clock. The two hinged members enable the insertion of the lower one, the standing post, in a perpendicular orientation to the surface of the road's sloping ground shoulder, achieving optimal support. This orientation is not possible in prior art guard rails, as its single post must be vertical, even on sloping ground shoulders of the road, with poor support from the sloping ground shoulder. The upper member of the structure can be turned up and down around the hinge that connects it to the standing post.

The upper member can be set at an angle to the anchored standing post by a holder member of the assembly. It extends from behind the hinge up to the point where it supports the rail at the desired place. This upper member is placed with its hinged connection to the standing post, lower than its connection to the rail.

When a colliding vehicle strikes it, the rail will be pushed up because of this orientation.

Energy absorbing elements of the assembly are connected the standing post and to the upper member. Their function is to restrict the movement of the upper member in a gradual manner, when a vehicle collides with the rail, in order to slow the vehicle's deceleration. Some of the energy absorbing elements must be bent, some must be torn, to let said upper post member to turn up by the colliding vehicle. This invented guardrail provides several improvements compared to the prior art, regarding its reaction to a vehicle colliding with: First and foremost, it provides slower deceleration of the colliding vehicle, thus diminishing the damages to the people and goods inside the vehicle.

Second makes overturning of the vehicle above the rail less likely, because of the mechanism whereby the rail is uplifted during the collision.

Third is the optimum support of the standing post by the road's ground shoulder, because of its perpendicular position in respect of the shoulder's surface and because only short part of it is outside the ground shoulder. This configuration lowers the likelihood of up rooting of the supporting assemblies by the colliding vehicle, and its falling into a ditch or down hill.

Fourth is the lowering of the likelihood of a rebounding of the colliding vehicle to the opposite lane, because of its slower deceleration, achieved by the gradual absorption of the energy of the collision.

Shlomo Lebel 4 152965/4 Brief description off the drawings The present invention will be now described in an illustrative but not limitative purpose, with the enclosed drawings of its preferred embodiment, wherein: Tig. 1 Provides a perspective view of a guard rail system 100 of the present invention.

Fig. 2 provides a side view of an assembly 2 of this invention.

Fig. 3 provides an enlarged rear view of an energy absorbing element 12 of this invention.

Fig 4 provides a magnified top view of a holder member 13 of this invention.

Fig. 5 provides a perspective view of the road guard rail system 100 of this invention, onto a car has collided causing uphfting of the rail.

Fig. 6 provides an enlarged side view of the assembly 2 of this invention, in which one chain of an energy absorbing element 11 is torn. 152965/5 Detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings A view of a preferred embodiment of this invention is provided in Fig.1. A guard-rail system 100, on its place on road's sloping ground shoulder 9, along the road's side, with its support assemblies 2, holding rail 6.

As viewed in Fig. 2, each of said assemblies is made of two posts, 3 and 4, connected to each other with a hinge 7. One of said posts, standing post 3, is meant to be anchored inside the said ground shoulder 9 . Hinge 7 is located close to the upper end of said standing post 3, that protrudes from shoulder 9. The second, upper member 4 that is connected with said hinge 7 to said standing post 3, holds said rail 6 at its upper end 4a, with a connection member 18, viewed in Fig. 1 , and extends to the other side of said hinge 7 at its distal end 4b with respect to said rail 6. Said connection member 18 is made to firmly hold said rail 6.

Referring again to Fig.1 , anchoring of the guardrail system 100 is done by inserting standing post 3 of each assembly 2 into the sloping ground shoulder 9, in perpendicular orientation to said shoulder's 9 surface. A short part of post 3 protrudes outside said shoulder, as shown in Fig.1. Such firm, optimal anchoring is possible at sloping ground shoulders only with a structure made according to the present invention, using two post members hinged together. Said upper member 4 is always set to point up, with its upper end 4a, as viewed in Fig. 2, higher than said hinge 7 that connects it to standing post 3.

Referring now to Figure 2, holder member 13 of this invention supports the upper member 4 at an angle in respect to the standing post 3, so that its upper end 4a holds rail 6 at the required height and distance from the road's side.

Said angle must be always larger than 90 degrees to ensure that a colliding vehicle will push it up.

As can be seen in Fig. 2 and 4, the lower end of holder member 13 is connected to said standing post 3 with bolt 13b, that is inserted into one of the holes 13d in member13a. Member 13a may be welded or bolted to standing post 3. As best seen in fig. 4, in the second, upper end of holder member 13, an open slot 13c with a U shape is provided. A bolt 23 connected with upper member 4 exerts a downward force on the bottom of said open slot 13c, supporting said upper member 4 at said angle. Open slot 13c lets upper member 4 to be lifted up, as bolt 23 can exit said open slot 13c when lifted up with upper member 4. As the slope of said ground shoulder 9 may be steep or shallow, the angle of upper member 4 with respect to standing post 3 must be adjusted accordingly. As said, this angle must be always larger than 90 degrees, so that a component of the pressure of the colliding vehicle will push up rail 6 with upper member 4. An exemplary angle adjustment arrangement 20, which includes holder 13, member 13a, bolt 13b, slot 13c (shown in Fig. 4), 6 152965/5 holes 13d, and bolt 23, is adapted to adjust the initial angle of upper member 4 with respect to standing post 3, in order to position rail 6 at its required placement.

The inventive guardrail system may advantageously include energy absorbing elements that resist the upper movement of rail 6 with upper member 4. That happens when a colliding vehicle exerts pressure on rail 6, connected to upper member 4. The cause of the upward direction of the pressure is the upward angle of upper member 4 with respect to said standing post 3. pAT seen in Figs 2, 4 and 6, energy absorbing element 11 comprising a plurality of chains, resists the upward movement of upper member 4 by chain members of several lengths. Said chains are connected at their lower ends to standing post 3 with bolt 13b or with other bolts positioned in lower holes in member 13a. At their upper ends, said chains are connected with bolt 23, that is connected to upper member 4. Said chains resist said upward movement and are meant to be torn, first the shortest one and others in the order of their length, the last one being the longest. This sequence of tearing of the chains absorbs some or all the energy of the collision, in a gradual manner, slowing the deceleration of the vehicle, and lowering the damages to people and goods therein Energy absorbing element 12 of this invention, shown in Fig 3, comprises channel 16, and collapsible members 12a -12e. Said collapsible members are made of metal sheets bent into gutter like units, or from pipes of several diameters cut in two halves along the length of each pipe, and then each half is cut again transversely into short units, as seen in fig. 3. Said units are the collapsible members 12a - 12e. Said units are connected to the lower side of channel 16. Element 12 is installed to the lower side 4b of upper member 4, with the collapsible members towards the shoulder 9. This side 4b of upper member 4, rotates downwards when the other side 4a, of upper member 4, is lifted up. This happens when a vehicle collides with rail 6, as seen in Fig. 5. In this case, energy absorbing element 12 will be urged against standing post 3, and its collapsible members will be consecutively bent between standing post 3 and channel 16, underside 4b of upper member 4. The structure of said element 12 will provide growing resistance to the turning of upper member 4, as more of its members become pressed and then bent.

The two energy absorbing elements 11 and 12 of said assembly 2, may perform the energy absorbing process simultaneously or consecutively, depending on the lengths of the chains of said energy absorbing element 11 and the form and placement of said energy absorbing element 12. As seen in Fig 3, element 12 can be connected with different holes15 to the distal side 4b of upper member 4. A connection closer to the end of side 4b of said upper member 4 will cause a delay in the bending of said members 12a -12e, because of the larger distance to said standing post 3. 7 152965/5 Fig. 5 provides a view of uplifted said rail 6 together with upper members 4, of assemblies 2, as the result of a collision with a vehicle. Rail 6 assumes a higher position than in its initial resting or undisturbed position. Its elevated height may prevent or reduce the danger of overturning said rail system 100 by the colliding vehicle and the vehicle falling into a ditch, or downhill.

Fig. 6 provides a view of assembly 2 with its upper member 4 lifted up and one of the chains of energy absorbing element 11 is torn. Element 12 is touching standing post 3. Holder member 13 is not shown on Fig 6, in order to better view the torn chain of energy absorbing element 1 1.

Other angle adjustment methods and gradual energy absorbing arrangements will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, without departing from the spirit and the scope of the appended claims.

Claims (6)

8 152965/5 What is claimed is:

1. A guard-raj system for road side installation, comprising: a longitudinal rail; ^ C ^ a plurality of supporting assemblies for said rail; each assembly of said assemblies including: a rigid standing post, having a bottom end adapted for installation in a ground . surface;. > a hinge ■,r disposed near a top end of said post; a rigid elongated upper member, connected to said standing post by meansjof said hinge; + ^ ^ L a connection member connecting between a first end of said upper member G and said rail; ^ ^ and a holder member attached to said standing post and supporting said upper member, ^the system adapted to enable an upward rotation of said first end of said elongated upper member by a rotation around said hinge, and an angle adjustment arrangement adapted to adjust initial angle between said upper member and said standing post.l

2. The guardrail system of claim 1 , wherein said angle adjustment arrangement includes a plurality positions for fixing said holder member with respect to said standing post.

3. The guard-rail system of claim 1 , said assembly further including: at least one energy absorbing element, connecting between said post and said upper member, to resist said upward rotation, whereby energy from a vehicle colliding against said rail is absorbed.

4. The guard rail system of any claims 1-3, further comprising: a road surface; wherein said ground surface is disposed adjacent to, and in sloping fashion with respect to, said road surface, and wherein said post is disposed within said ground surface at a substantially perpendicular angle with respect to said ground surface.

5. The guard-rail system of claims 1-4, wherein said post is disposed within said ground surface at a depth whereby said hinge is disposed below a height of said longitudinal rail.

6. The guard rail system of claim 3, wherein said energy absorbing element Includes a plurality of chains of varying length, connected to both said post and said upper member, whereby said upward rotation is resisted by said chains in a consecutive manner.