The most distinctive feature of corrugated beam guard rails is the wave shaped cross section. This design is for practical impact attenuation, not just aesthetics. During a collision, the corrugated structure behaves like a bumper. It disperses the impact across the length of the guard rail, and prevents a single section from breaking and absorbing all the impact.

Zhengda creates highway guardrails made out of corrugated galvanized steel with an engineered precise wavy pattern. Each wavy guardrail consists of evenly spaced and uniformly deep corrugations which meet traffic engineering standards. Take for instance their Hot Dip Galvanized Corrugated Steel Traffic Barrier. It uses a standardized corrugated design for a barrier of length 4320mm. When a guardrail of this design is struck by a vehicle, the wavy corrugations of the steel guardrail deform to absorb the vehicle's kinetic energy. This decreases the impact energy concentration on the vehicle and ensures the safety of the vehicle occupants.

High Strength Steel Improves Impact Resistance

The steel used for the construction of the beam guardrails has a direct relation with the impact absorption capabilities of the guardrail. High strength steel can absorb and withstand large collision forces while maintaining the guardrail structural integrity during an impact. This is why Zhengda uses impact resistant steel, the Q235 steel plate and thickened steel, for their corrugated steel beam guardrails.

Take Zhengda’s BXHL11 Beam Steel Highway Guardrail Crash Barrier as an example. Zhengda uses steel with a thickness of more than 16mm. Thickened steel protects against the impact of high-speed vehicles (up to 100km/h). When a collision occurs, the steel does not crack or excessively deform, but instead bends within a safe range to absorb energy. The company’s strict quality control checks the steel strength of every cross-section of the reinforced steel beam guardrail to enable consistent performance in impact absorption.

Hot Dip Galvanization Maintains Structural Integrity During Impact

Corrosion threatens the guardrail’s structural integrity. Rusty guardrails may break during collisions and lose ability to absorb impact. Zhengda's reinforced steel beam guardrails use hot dip galvanization, a surface treatment process that produces a dense layer of zinc on the steel surface. This layer protects the guardrails from corrosion and maintains structural strength during impact.

Zhengda follows ASTM A123 standard for the hot dip galvanization of their corrugated steel beam guardrails. When the guardrails do deform during an impact, the galvanized steel layer bonds and stretches with the steel core, which keeps it safe from rust and keeps the guardrail from splitting. Customer feedback from coastal areas indicates that, even after 18 months of use, the galvanized corrugated steel beam guardrails from Zhengda still has their impact absorbing properties and overall structural integrity.

Impact Energy Dissipation Through Modular Systems

Because of their design, the impact absorbing corrugated steel beam guardrails are installed in a modular fashion, where each section of the guardrail connects to the next. This design holds all the components of the system together as a single unit which improves absorption as energy from an impact is transferred to the adjacent guardrail section. To ensure efficient energy transfer, the connection components in the guardrails are designed with this in mind.

Zhengda’s corrugated steel beam guardrails utilize a quick connect system for their modular design. The connection between sections is firm yet flexible. When a vehicle collides with one section the energy is not only absorbed by that section but also transferred to adjacent sections through the connection parts. This multi section energy sharing reduces the burden on a single section. For example their Professional Highways Traffic Barriers use this modular design. During a collision the impact energy spreads to 2-3 adjacent guardrail sections maximizing absorption and minimizing damage.

Impact Absorption By The Guardrail Posts And The Beam

Each set of corrugated steel beam guardrails is made of 2 components, the corrugated beam and the supporting posts. The posts are more than just a beam fixture. When the beam is struck, some of the energy is transferred to the posts. The posts deform with just enough resistance to absorb newly added impact energy, creating a joint impact absorption system.

Zhengda designs corrugated steel beam guardrails with high strength posts. These posts are of the same high quality steel as the beam, and are thicker, too. For example, the posts that go with the modular corrugated guardrails have the same diameter or the same cross section size as the beam posts. During a collision, as the beam and guardrail components are designed to deform, they pull the posts along with them. The posts will slightly bend to absorb even more energy. The interrelationship between the beam and the posts offers a higher level of safety to the driver that the corrugated steel beam guardrail will protect.

Reliable Impact Absorption is Compliant with International Standards

Zhengda’s beam corrugated guardrails are designed to eliminate fully the risks of failing to absorb the guardrails and beam components by fully eliminating the risks of failing to meet international safety standards. These standards define specific regulations concerning the guardrail design, strength of the constituent material, and characteristics of impact absorption. The impact absorption performance of Zhengda’s beam corrugated guardrail systems has passed multiple international standards including ISO and CE certifications, and professional impact absorption testing.

Zhengda performs safety tests on its guardrails to ensure they work well during accidents. Here we look at how the power of the accidents is measured to ensure safety. For the guardrails built out of corrugated steel they have passed several tests and even built out of corrugated guardrails have passed safety tests with vehicles crashing at different speeds from multiple angles. After performing the tests on the guardrails they have outstripped the standards in effectiveness in breaking the power of the crashes. Oscar Zhengda has passed safety standards in impact absorbing for safety and crash tests. As Oscar has passed safety standards for impact absorbing the guards have been trusted for their friendly impact absorbing performance. Oscar Zhengda work on guardrails is trusted by their clients for their performance on impact absorbing.

To summarize the impact absorbing performance of the corrugated steel beam guardrails is a result of the impact of power from corrugatd steel, the strong impact steel, dipping the steel in high Zinc, modular building of forging connections, complying to the guardrails standards. High performing impact absorbing steel guardrails is the result of the multiple standards. Ensuring the corrugated beam guardrails are of high quality is necessary in reinforcing the safety of drivers on the highway. Understanding the guardrails beam will work to highlight the guardrails safety on highway.