GFRP Reinforced Concrete Bridge Barriers: Part 1, Design and Numerical Studies

Abstract

Concrete road barriers are crucial for vehicle safety, preventing accidents by keeping vehicles within their lanes or away from hazardous areas. These barriers must effectively stop vehicles from crossing into oncoming traffic or off-road areas, particularly after a loss of control. Understanding how barriers perform under various vehicular impacts, influenced by factors like vehicle type and impact angle, is vital. Traditionally, these barriers are steel-reinforced, offering proven strength but suffering from corrosion-related degradation. An alternative, such as Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP), offers high strength without the drawback of corrosion, suggesting a significant improvement in barrier longevity and performance. In this work, a concrete barrier that is reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) materials is designed based on the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) Type D concrete barriers with steel bar reinforcements with adjustments to meet the properties of GFRP. Based on this design, the strength as well as the behavior of GFRP reinforced concrete barrier under different types of loadings is then explored and modeled using commercial software ABAQUS and LS-Dyna. The static loading is first applied to the GFRP, and steel bar reinforced concrete barriers for comparison. Different concrete barrier models are also considered to study the influence of different cast approaches. Afterwards, the behaviors of GFRP reinforced concrete barriers under car and truck impact scenarios are also modeled. Truck collisions with different angles are considered to explore the behavior of GFRP reinforced concrete barrier under different possible collision scenarios. The modeling results show that the reaction forces from the dynamic impact modeling are much lower than the design strength.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Comments

Missouri Department of Transportation, Grant None

Keywords and Phrases

finite element modeling; GFRP reinforced concrete barrier; impact study; reinforcement design; static loading

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-303209386-8

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2366-2565; 2366-2557

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 Springer, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2026

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