Effects on Elastic Walls due to Collision of Articulated Trucks

This study was intended to assess what happens during the collision of an articulated trucks against an elastic wall, in terms of interaction forces and stress resultants at the lower edge of the wall. The research was carried out through a numerical approach and includes three parts. In the first part, a brief description of the main characteristics of the FE model is proposed. Moreover, the comparisons of full scale and simulated outputs of the collisions used for its validation are described. The obtained results demonstrate that the modeling process is accurate and that the FE model is reliable in a wide range of impact conditions. The second part is aimed at clarifying what happens during the impact. The results obtained clearly show that the interaction forces and stress resultants at the lower edge of the wall are affected in a meaningful manner much more by the impact angle than by the transversal kinetic energy. The last part defines a simple procedure useful to estimate the overall interaction force and the maximum bending moment at the lower edge of the wall for a very wide range of impact conditions. The tests performed on the procedure show a very good agreement between estimated and calculated values.