Abstract For the purpose of road safety, it is vital to reduce the severity of road accidents and increase safety around the roadway area by deploying guardrails. In case of a car crash, a guardrail post must be deformable so that such restraint is not too abrupt due to the occupant’s sensitivity. Soil type influences on the guardrail post behavior have been a somewhat unfounded variable due to the high soil heterogeneity and challenging interpretation of its real implications on the safety of guardrail systems. Since little attention is concentrated on evaluating the guardrail post behavior through simplified procedures, this article aims to provide a simplified experimental and numerical approach to study the behavior of guardrail posts located on organic soil. Results of laboratory and in-situ tests indicated that guardrail posts behavior located on organic soil depends on section orientation, driving depth, and loading speed. To confirm and compare the in-situ tests, simplified numerical simulations through Plaxis 3D software were carried out, and data from numerical modeling approved the accuracy of in-situ results.

Several measures have been taken to satisfy global water consumption needs. Desalination has been proven to be a viable solution and has therefore been increasingly used over the past two decades. This research is aimed at making a contribution through the use of numerical modeling to predict the behavior of laminar flow in desalination systems with an incompressible fluid (sea water). The study considered two scenarios- with and without a pressure-driven membrane, the latter enabling the study of the effects of gravity. The theoretical description of flow is based on mass, momentum and energy conservation equations. Computational fluid dynamics techniques were used to simulate flow according to different scenarios using ANSYS 12.1 software. The results show that the membrane significantly influences the flow process, with a significant impact in section x = 0.240 m when beginning to develop in the lower part of the cross-section.

Con el fin de satisfacer las necesidades de agua de consumo a escala global se han tomado varias medidas. La desalinización ha demostrado ser una solución viable, y por lo tanto es una de las utilizadas cada vez más en las dos últimas décadas. Este trabajo de investigación pretende ser una contribución que emplea la modelización numérica para predecir el comportamiento de flujo laminar de un fluido incompresible (agua de mar) en los sistemas de desalinización. Dos escenarios diferentes se consideran: con y sin una membrana impulsada por presión. La última ha permitido estudiar los efectos de la gravedad. La descripción teórica del flujo se basa en las ecuaciones de conservación de masa, momento y energía. Se utilizaron técnicas de dinámica de fluidos computacional para simular el flujo en diferentes escenarios, utilizando el software ANSYS 12.1. Los resultados mostraron que la membrana tiene una influencia muy importante en el proceso de flujo, con un impacto importante de la sección x = 0.240 m, cuando se empieza a desarrollar hacia la zona inferior de la sección transversal.