Analysis and Testing of Florida Jersey Safety Shaped Bridge Rail (05-0944)
Dean C. Alberson, Texas A&M Transportation Institute
William Frederick Williams, Texas A&M Transportation Institute
Charles Boyd, Florida Department of Transportation
Mark J. Bloschock, Texas Department of Transportation

Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has extensive Jersey safety shaped barrier in use on highways today. A number of the designs from previous years have critical amounts of reinforcement and when the current design procedure is used to evaluate the respective designs, the analysis indicates marginal performance may be anticipated when impacted by an errant vehicle. To evaluate the barriers, a detailed analysis of the field installations per The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Official’s (AASHTO) LRFD Bridge Specification was done, static load tests simulating the design conditions set forth in (AASHTO) LRFD Bridge Specification were conducted, and ultimately two full-scale crash tests were completed for validation of the analysis and comparison to the static load tests.