Dynamic evaluation of New York state's aluminum pedestrian signal pole system.

Details

• Creators:
  Rosenbaugh, Scott ; Faller, Ronald K. ; Lechtenberg, Karla A. ; Bielenberg, Robert W. ; Sicking, Dean L. ; Reid, John D.
• Corporate Creators:
  Midwest Roadside Safety Facility
• Corporate Contributors:
  New York (State). Dept. of Motor Vehicles ; United States. Federal Highway Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Traffic signs
  • Pedestrian signs
  • Strength of materials Traffic signs and signals--Testing
  • Roads--Safety measures
• Publication/ Report Number:
  TRP-03-223-09
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  New York
• Edition:
  Final report; 2009.
• Corporate Publisher:
  Midwest Roadside Safety Facility
• Abstract:
  The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) mounts pedestrian “hand/man” signals to aluminum ; poles and uses frangible transformer bases to allow the system to break away. However, engineers at NYSDOT believed ; that the material properties of the aluminum poles themselves would allow the pedestrian signal poles to break away ; without the use of transformer bases. Elimination of the frangible transformer base would result in significant savings. ; An aluminum pedestrian signal pole system was erected at the Valmont testing facility and tested with the Valmont- ; MwRSF/UNL pendulum with crushable nose in accordance with NCHRP Report No. 350 test designation no. 3-60. Upon ; impact the pole broke away from the base plate assembly, and the surrogate vehicle change in velocity was measured to be ; 13.9 ft/s (4.2 m/s), satisfying the limit of 16.4 ft/s (5.0 m/s). However, the remaining stub height measured 4.5 in. (114 mm), ; and violated the 4 in. (100 mm). Thus, the test was deemed unsuccessful. The results from the impact test were used in a ; numerical analysis to predict the change in velocity for the high-speed impact test, test designation no. 3-61. This analysis ; showed that the aluminum pedestrian signal pole would also satisfy the occupant risk criteria during a high-speed test. ; Since the pole cleanly broke away in the test and the high-speed impact analysis showed a satisfactory change in ; velocity, the excessive stub height was the only result that prevented this installation from becoming crashworthy. As such, ; three separate design modifications were presented for aiding the system to satisfy the stub maximum height limit.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/18071/dot_18071_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 8.24 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ff80caf9a284b4bb432d2bf79d348b1560e346fc5ba7dd4d77532841876d7d019928b2fb1ede9c13160fc526b4cf3ebadd17353f920471bb12b35cc8f22fc0ab