(gentle music) (air whooshes)
- [Narrator] They are one of the most recognizable parts
of construction on Texas highways.
Portable concrete barriers, or PCBs, are designed
to protect workers and drivers in construction zones.
Damage to PCBs can shorten their life expectancy.
Cracks and chipping can occur when struck by a vehicle,
that can also happen
while being stored or in transit to a location.
Defining the service life of PCBs is important
to reducing the risk of unsafe barriers in use.
The Texas Department of Transportation
and the Texas A & M Transportation Institute
are working to develop best practices for the management
of repairing or replacing PCB segments.
- The problem with concrete barrier is that
up to the point of this research,
there were no really federal guidelines
that would suggest, or state guidelines for Texas
that would suggest what is the service life
for these barriers.
- So what this project does,
it will help the districts and the maintenance crews
determine when a particular concrete traffic barrier
is acceptable after use or after impact,
or whether it can be repaired,
or whether it needs to be discarded.
- So we went and reviewed the existing literature.
We look at the state practices from other DOTs,
but that wasn't enough.
We wanted to specifically look
at the barriers that TxDOT is using,
the portable concrete barrier segments that TxDOT is using,
and we wanted to make sure of these existing literature,
the state of practice from other states
complementing them with the component testing,
computer simulations to predict behaviors
and the full scale crash testing.
Barriers that we identified that would help us
make any decision with these guidelines.
- We determine our critical type of connection
between the precast barriers and, you know,
what type of deformation we thought would be acceptable
within that particular connection type.
That was probably one of the more critical aspects of this.
- The nice thing is that we do conduct a lot of testing
with portable concrete barriers, different type of barriers
but, you know, portable concrete barriers.
So we have experience from that perspective.
We were able to go and review all the crash testing
that we conducted,
understanding what were the damage modes, number one,
and what were the type of damage mode
that the characteristics that we identified in testing.
We also look at locations that we could visit
to review these portable concrete barrier segments
as they actually were used on the roadways.
And we use all that information when we finally
make our decision on how to proceed with the testing.
- The results of this research will be incorporated
into guidance for the maintenance districts
and the 25 districts around the state.
So the districts now have a much better idea
and guidelines as to, "Okay, what do I need to do
to make sure this barrier is safe to put out
on the Texas roadways?"
- The results of this project is actually
a visual guideline that we developed.
This visual guideline is supposed to support
the engineer in charge to make a decision
whether the barrier segments needs to be replaced
and needs to be repaired, or are still fine for use
which is going to be hopefully make it easier
to the engineer in charge to make that determination.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.