Displacement-Based Approach for the Assessment of Overturning Stability of Rectangular Rigid Barriers Subjected to Point Impact

Abstract

In this paper, a new design approach based on the principles of energy and momentum conservation is proposed for the design of free-standing rigid barriers subject to point impact. The novelty of this approach lies in the fact that the mass inertia effect of the barriers and the coefficient of restitution for the impact are considered. With the new design approach, it is shown that for the same impact scenario, a taller barrier actually has a higher factor of safety due to the increased mass inertia—a result that could not have been obtained in a force-based calculation. The new approach has been verified by results from systematic physical and simulated impact experimentation. This paper presents full details of the derivation of the analytical expressions, their experimental verification, and illustration by a worked example. A design chart is also presented to make the proposed methodology easier to implement.