Corus develops new roadside steel restraint system designed to reduce serious injury and save lives on UK roads

29 Jan 2007

• New system significantly reduces Head Impact Criteria (HIC) a major contributor to injury and death
• Highways agency approves new restraint products

Each year there are around 3,200 deaths on UK roads and over 310,000 serious injuries, of which 65 per cent can be attributed to human error.  Corus, the international steel company, has now developed a new family of roadside restraint systems called Protect 365™ that it believes, if adopted, will significantly contribute to improved road safety and help reduce the number of serious injuries and death on UK roads.

Combining over 40 years experience of manufacturing barrier systems, extensive materials knowledge and automotive engineering expertise, Corus has developed Protect 365™ using class-leading simulation software, advanced modelling techniques and physical testing.  Importantly, Protect 365™ products, which have now been given formal accreditation by the Highways Agency, go far beyond the minimum requirements of the European standard (EN1317) for highways road restraint safety systems.  Corus believe these new products mark a significant step forward in performance levels for Highway restraint systems.

During the 4 years development process for Protect 365™ products, Corus decided to challenge the historical prescribed test procedures within the European standard.  Bill Russell, market and business development manager, Corus Tubes said: “The European EN1317 standard has set an important safety benchmark for the industry, however we wanted to go and test beyond its minimum requirements and understand worst case scenarios.   As a major supplier to the automotive industry, we work directly with OEMs and understand the high importance placed on safety.  We wanted to challenge the currently accepted impact test assumption because we discovered that, although a system could pass the European standard, it didn’t necessarily mean that it was safe under all circumstances“.

A major discovery occurred when Corus automotive engineers working on the development of Protect 365™ products evaluated a set of impact test results and saw that the Head Impact Criteria (HIC) was far too severe.  Although HIC measurements are a recognised automotive industry benchmark used by OEMs, it is not a test criteria currently used in the European standard to define crash barrier safety performance levels.

Using fully instrumented crash dummies, Corus tests showed that during impact speeds exceeding 110Km/h, occupants heads could come through the vehicle side window and strike the barrier.  The resulting simulated HIC value of 2300 in this scenario was well over twice the 1000 value targeted by vehicle manufacturers for vehicle development, and would almost certainly equate to serious injury or even death.

Mr Russell continued:  “As a result of these tests, we realised we needed to modify the design of Protect 365™ to include a unique ‘step’ in the barrier profile shape in order to eliminate this effect and prevent head impact occurring.  Subsequent tests on the re-designed barrier have shown a significant reduction of the HIC value to a safe level of 107, well within the automotive industry target levels.”

Another Corus challenge to the EN1317 standard, related to the size of vehicles tested against the barrier system.   The standard requires manufacturers to test how a barrier performs against the heaviest vehicle within a system class, for example a 30 tonne truck, and then test against a 900kg small car to check impact severity.  However, there is no formal requirement to test against anything in-between these two extremes.  Mr Russell continued: “The benefit of using our computer modelling techniques and simulation software to develop Protect 365™ products meant that we could also easily test our system against a typical 1,500kg mid-segment car.   We felt that this was particularly important as the majority of cars on Europe’s roads today are in this mid-range weight category.”

Corus discovered that when a 1,500kg car crashed against its barrier design, the increased impact energy caused more deformation of the barrier mounting brackets, potentially leading to unacceptably high levels of severity in the vehicle passenger cell, so making the system unsafe.  As a result of these tests, Corus re-designed its barrier to include an energy absorbing arrangement resulting in a more controlled and progressive deformation leading to acceptable severity levels for both small and mid-range cars.

Commenting on the Corus Protect 365™ announcement Edmund King, Executive Director, RAC Foundation said:  “Over the last few years much effort has been made by vehicle manufacturers, governments and campaign groups such as ours to improve the safety on roads in the UK and rest of Europe.  This is being achieved through the combination of new technology, better designed cars and the education of motorists to improve driving and reduce speed.”

Mr King continues:  “However, we now need to focus more on the important role street architecture, including roadside barriers, plays in the wider safety debate.  When all else fails, the effectiveness of the roadside restraint barrier can mean the difference between life and death.  We believe that the development of new restraint systems by companies like Corus will make a significant contribution to improved road safety.” 

Ends

Press release and pictures can be downloaded from websites: www.automotivepr.com  and www.corusautomotive.com

Corus Automotive media enquiries:

Marco Ferrari +44 (0)207 494 8050                 mferrari@automotivepr.com

Belle Wilson +44 (0) 207 494 8050                 bwilson@automotivepr.com

Corus :

Sarah Middleton                                     Sarah.middleton@corusgroup.com