The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin -ARnews-

Re: Pole Impacts- Breaking Fracture Energy

Ed Phillips ([email protected])
Wed, 23 Dec 1998 00:40:10 -0500 (EST)

Joe,

I have a copy of the testing Texas Transportation Institute did under government contract, and I've spoken briefly to King Mak about it, a few years ago. The BFE (Breakaway Fracture Energy) was an empirical relationship developed by swinging a 2000 lb weight representing a vehicle down into a series of wooden utility poles. The test set-up made available information as to the initial Kinetic Energy.

Plotting the data and solving it resulted in the published BFE curves for non-fracture / partial fracture / complete fracture as a function (this is off the top of my head) of pole dimensions and type.

I remember when I spoke to Mr. Mak he said that they didn't manage to completely fracture a pole in their tests and he suspected you'd have to be "going like a bat out of hell" to do it. [No speeds assigned to that charcterization].

Ed
Ed Phillips
[email protected]

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