Proto-Talks

Transcription

Matt Morgan: Hello and welcome everyone to Proto-Talks. We're back with our sixth edition. My name is Matt Morgan. I'm the President of Protogetic, the protective design marketplace, one of the industry's only digital marketplaces for protective design materials. Before we get started, I want to put a big shout out to ARX Perimeters, our sponsor for today. They have some outstanding solutions for portable and temporary vehicle barrier products. Please check them out at protogetic.com. Today's 70-minute discussion is really going to be an interesting topic, although it does sound a little bit dry. We're going into standards and ratings for vehicle barriers. And this is a topic that always comes back into the conversation in terms of how to effectively create secure perimeter strategies in protecting people and property.
So it's really actually very good timing as well, because this week there was a meeting of the F12 Committee for ASTM and a lot of the topics that we covered in those discussions, which are a little bit more closed group, we will be discussing today as well in our keynote speaker's presentation. So the timing is really good for this type of thing, or for this topic and I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be about a 70-minute discussion. You're going to be able to ask questions. Please do put them in the Q&A, if you can remember, that's at the bottom of your screen, we'd appreciate that.
But to that end, let me start with our keynote speaker today, Mr. Jeff Halaut. Yeah, the President of Halaut Security Consulting. He has about 37 years of construction and electronic security experience. He is a subject matter expert for design specification and implementation of active and passive vehicle barriers. He has trained architects and engineers on these types of standards and ratings and integrating their projects with some of his projects as well. And frankly speaking, has also made Protogetic a lot better in terms of how it vets and verifies vehicle barrier products. So we're super lucky to have him. Jeff, welcome. How are you?
Jeff Halaut: I'm doing good. How about you? Sorry about that.
Matt Morgan: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I was also going to mention that you and I, in the beginning, we didn't get off on the right foot but as the old saying goes, there's nothing a couple of bottles of bourbon won't solve. So-
Jeff Halaut: That is true. Absolutely true. No, we didn't, it was an interesting and a little bit of a sticky beginning, but it's been a good friendship ever since.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. But it's great to have you here and we're really looking forward to it. And I just think it's really fortuitous timing with the ASTM meeting that we both attended this week, as well as our panelist, Henning. It's just really good timing to be talking about this stuff.
Jeff Halaut: Oh, absolutely. I mean the only thing I've got to preface this with is, I usually do this presentation for architects and engineers on a one hour lunch and learn, and of course you being you tell me I get to do it in 30 minutes. So...
Matt Morgan: Well, look, it's all about time efficiency now. This is private sector stuff. This isn't the government. I'm going to let you take away. Jeff, speak to you in a little bit. Yeah?
Jeff Halaut: Great. Talk to you soon.
All right. I'm going to jump right on in because like I said, I've got 30 minutes to do this talk. I like to call this part the jargon, this section. It's all about navigating the technical jargon of the crash standards. The original barrier test methods were first published in 1985 by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to assess the crash performance of perimeter barriers and gates. The standard was set for a specific vehicle of weight, speed, as well as the penetration. The crash test specification was first published in 1985 as SD-STD-2.01. And in 2003, the United States Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security decided to update it to REVA. For this whole thing, I'm just not going to do the SD-STD-2.01, we're just going to call REVA.
But that was in 2003, so the standard from 1985 to 2003 stayed for almost for 17 years. And then only four years later after that, ASTM took over the standard in 2007 and published its first F2656. To maintain the consistency with DOS though, at that time, they included the same exact test vehicle that was specified in the 2003 REVA, a medium duty diesel truck weighing 15,000 pounds. However at that time, ASTM also added three additional vehicles, a standard small passenger car at 2,400 pounds, a pickup truck at 5,000 pounds, and a heavy goods truck at 65,000 pounds. So they expanded on the standard exponentially. Because of time constraints, we're only going to talk about those two standards. You'll see the other ones like the ASTMF3016 safety barriers in the UK PAS68 and international IWA14, they're just going to have to wait for another time, because we're never going to get through it all.
With each standard, so let's move onto the technical jargon part two, with each standard, you had a crash rating and those ratings were determined by the size and speed of a vehicle upon impact with the barrier. For those ratings for the DOS version, you had K12, K8, and K4. And remember, they only had one vehicle that they were using, it was a 15,000 pound vehicle, medium duty truck. ASTM, you have so many more nowadays with the heavy vehicle, the medium vehicle, the pickups, the small cars, everything else. So you had a whole bunch of different ratings. So you have the M50, M40, M30, the PU60, PU50, PU40, and PU30 was the pickup. H50, H40, and H30 were all heavy duty vehicles. And then you had a C class, which was the compact vehicle or the small passenger car. Don't worry, if this doesn't make sense, we'll dig into this much more in a little bit. Just trying to get through the beginning.
So from there we'll move on to what I think is even more important than the crash ratings is part three of the jargon, which is the penetration ratings. The penetration rating is measured by how far the vehicle traveled once it's encountered the barrier from a specific point on the vehicle to a specific point on the barrier. And these have changed over the years. So we'll talk about that all in a little bit. With DOS, you had penetrations of L1, L2, and L3. And with ASTM, you had penetrations of P1, P2, P3, and P4.
Ironically enough, this portion of the technical jargon is where I like to spend most of my time when I'm talking to architects and engineers, because this is most often left out of all the specifications that I read, or I won't say all, about all the specifications I read and cause for a lot of concern, because not defining this portion, the specification often results in the installation of the wrong product for the area it's intended to protect. Again, don't worry about all these numbers that are sitting on the screen, we'll dig into more of all that in a little bit.
So, are you confused yet? So as if part one, part two, and part three are not enough, now you've got to know what the classification of the barrier I'm using, such as crash tested, engineered, designed/rated, and I just added the rated today because of something I just read on another specification, and certified. Which one of these do you need? Which one is the right one? Manufacturers use these classifications as a way to build trust or confidence in the barrier that they're trying to sell you and trying to tell you will work. Crash rated doesn't necessarily mean that it passed the test in the way that you would want it to, but we'll get into that one just in a little bit. Engineered is generally basically a professional engineer or an engineering company will take a design of a barrier, run calculations, or even possibly an FEA, and tell you that it'll stop the vehicle at a certain weight and speed and penetration without running an actual test.
Designed is simply that, somebody with the experience in the industry has designed a barrier that they believe will work, however they didn't have the barrier tested or even engineered. They just designed it. And finally, certified, which means you took the barrier that you designed to a test lab, such as Calspan, and you installed the barrier based on the design drawings and hit it with a vehicle and had the results documented. In my opinion, and I realize there's a ton of different views on this, but from a consulting standpoint and recommendations to my customers, first is always certified. However, I will, every now and then, go to an engineered version if a manufacturer, for instance, has a certified M50 P1 barrier that has been crash tested and passed the test. Engineering that down to an M30 P1 and running calculations based off that test data are a pretty good indicator that it's going to work. The other two, crash tested and designed, I just don't ever recommend them. I don't know what's going to happen with the system when it's actually put in place.
So now let's look at and dig into more of what these crash standards mean and how they've changed over the years. So we're going to look at understanding the HVM, which is the new phrase, used to be active and passive vehicles, now it's hostile vehicle mitigation. Vehicle barrier, various levels of the designs, designations, sorry about that. So we're going to start with the original Department of State, SD-STD-2.01, and you'll see the asterisk, we'll talk about that. All of the DOS and ASTM crash standards are derived from a perpendicular impact of a vehicle, in other words, a 90 degree crash. I probably shouldn't have to say that, but that's important because it's not the same with the past '68 or the IWA14 standard. They can hit them at different angles and they often do. So the way, you have to really pay attention when you look at the European standards on what you're actually getting and how it comes into play, but all the DOS and ASTM ones are only a 90 degree hit.
Each of the US crash standards, DOS or ASTM, use two different indicators to determine the level of the barrier. First we have the crash rating. That's denoted on the DOS by the letter K. There's only one vehicle in the DOS standard, so that makes this a little bit easier. K4 is a 15,000 pound vehicle traveling at 30 miles an hour, K8 is a 15,000 pound vehicle traveling at 40 miles an hour, and finally, K12 is a 15,000 pound vehicle traveling at 50 miles an hour. The second indicator is the penetration rating. L indicates the vehicle's front bumper distance of penetration upon impact with the barrier, and this is under the original standard from 1985, just in case I got people shaking their heads out there. L3 equals a vehicle penetration of one meter or three foot or less. L2 is a vehicle penetration of 1.01 meters or three feet one inch to six meters or 20 feet. And L1 was a vehicle penetration of 6.01 meters or 20 feet one inch to 15 meters or 50 feet. This was the rule from 1985 until 2003, when it was replaced by REVA.
The most significant changes from the standard to the REVA were, number one, that they removed the penetration ratings of L2 and L1. So they basically said, "If it wasn't L3, it wasn't acceptable to the DOS." And it was considered basically a fail in their minds. The second largest change was it moved the penetration point from the front bumper of the truck to the leading edge of the truck bed. So it pushed it back approximately eight feet. The reason they did that is they were looking more at payload and explosives in a payload than they were at the vehicle penetration, so they wanted to push that back a little bit.
And lastly, it's standardized on the type of vehicle that would be considered acceptable for the crash test, because before this point, you could use just about any type of medium duty vehicle, whether it's gasoline or diesel as long as it weighed 15,000 pounds. So it could be a water truck with a bumper height of 12 inches that came in or a standard truck with a bumper height of 20 inches or 26 inches or whatever, so it changed the vehicle. So this standardized that vehicle to a medium duty diesel truck that was 15,000 pounds. So it was specific to the make and manufacturer and model.
Remember a couple minutes ago when I mentioned the term crash tested? If the barrier was tested to the DOS REVA standard and the penetration was more than one meter, it failed the test, but that didn't preclude the manufacturer from selling the barrier as a crash-tested barrier. It stopped them, at that point, from being able to get that barrier on the DOD list. However, the DOD list includes a lot of L2 and L1 barriers that were grandfathered in from 1985 to 2003. So it was crash tested, it didn't meet the standard of the REVA, however they were actually giving it an L2 penetration or an L1 penetration. So it didn't preclude the manufacturer from selling that barrier.
The next standard we're going to look at is the ASTM. Excuse me. In 2007, ASTM published the F2656-07 crash standard. Taking over the crash standard from the DOS, this new standard included the same test vehicle as specified in the 2003 REVA standard. However, it also added additional test vehicles at the time, which were a small passenger car, half ton pickup truck, and a tandem axle dump truck. F2656-07 was not without its issues though and I know I'm going to probably catch a little flack on this, but I like to call the 07 the T-ball standard, the T-ball of crash standards. Everyone's a winner and everyone gets a trophy.
Let me explain. As you see on the screen, for the purpose of this presentation, I'm going to match the same vehicle with the DOS. So M indicates medium duty, 15,000 pound vehicle, and the numbers after that indicate the speed at which the vehicle are traveling. So M30 is consistent with the K4 in the REVA, 15,000 pound vehicle moving at 30 miles an hour. And M40 is consistent with the K8 and M50 is consistent with the K12. That's, however, pretty much where the similarities end. Let's look at the penetration. The REVA of the DOS had only L3, penetration of one meter or less from the truck bed. ASTM changed that indicator from an L rating to a P, P standing for penetration.
The 2007 version of it where it becomes a little interesting and why it should be renamed the T-ball standard. P1 is equivalent to the L3, they match. They were one meter or less from the bed. P2, though, changed it, went from one meters to seven meters or 23 feet where the L2 was one meter to six meters or 20 feet. And then the P3 on the ASTM 07 version was seven meters to 30 meters or 98 feet where the L1 was only up to 50 feet. And that's all well and good, you can add that and change it, but I mean that's a lot of penetration. But for those of you unfamiliar with how a crash test is conducted, the vehicle is drained of all fluids, the engine's not running, and it's pulled down a track on a pulley system. And right before it strikes the barrier, it's released at the speed the manufacturer's testing to, whether it was 30 miles an hour or 40 or 50, plus or minus a couple miles an hour.
Upon impact with the barrier, the vehicle's dynamic penetration, which is measured by the maximum horizontal penetration distance of the reference point of the test vehicle, as opposed to its static penetration or final resting point, is what it was measured on the penetration. I know that doesn't mean much, however in other words, if your barrier used a giant rubber band and the vehicle hit it and it stretched 500 feet and then the vehicle bounced back 600 feet, your penetration's still 500 feet. So it's not where the final resting point was.
So that brings us to our last penetration rating in the 07 standard, which was P4. P4 had a vehicle penetration of 30.01 meters or greater. Yep, everyone's a winner, everyone gets a trophy. You can put a water bottle out there and run a car over it and it goes out into a field and it's released and it stops in 500 feet and you've got a certified M50 P4 barrier. Since the 07 standard though, there have been three additional updates to the ASTM F2656 in 2015, 2018, and again in 2020. There were major changes in the 2015 and the first one was that the P4 penetration rating was removed, citing that it just didn't have a substantial relevance, which I can't argue with. They also added a couple of new vehicles, a full sized sedan at 4,600 pounds and a cab over class seven at almost 16,000 pound, which matches the IWA14 or the European style truck. So, they brought in a lot of what the IWA standard was into the ASTM.
The next revision with the major changes was the one in 2020. It incorporated two major changes from the 15 and 18A version. The first and most significant was that all penetrations would now be measured from the leading edge of the barrier, so removing any question on the testing. So for instance, if you have a wedge barrier and it's an eight foot front to back. From REVA through 2018, the penetration was measured from the back of that barrier. So your bed started at back of that barrier so you had an extra eight feet to do it. So they've moved that penetration point to the beginning, so now the crash test on 2020 starts, that bed starts right at the beginning of that barrier, which when you're looking at a bollard, it's either eight, 10, or 12 inches around, it only moves the penetration point 12 inches, 10 inches, or eight inches as opposed to eight feet. So it puts everybody on a little bit of a better playing field. It was really hard, and it probably still going to be really hard, for a bollard to get a M50 P1 rating just because of where they're measuring it from and you're going to find a lot of wedge barriers that were M50 P1, at this point are not going to be.
The second change it was determined that the previous bed attachment was deemed to be inadequate, so the number of sheer plates was increased. I've personally seen this where a couple crash tests were run and the vehicle stopped dead, but the bed just sheared straight off and went flying over top of the truck and they counted that as a P2 because it flew further than one meter.
So now that we have a basic high level understanding, hopefully you do, a little bit better of the ASTM standards. The next slide I want to show you all, I actually pulled out of a specification on April 5th of this year. This is why I'm saying education's critical when we start talking to architects and engineers. And I wish I could say this was uncommon, but I probably see one, two, maybe three of these a week when I pull them out. Notice the impact rating on this one, that they want a K4 rating withstanding a 15,000 pound vehicle impacting at 30 miles an hour when tested at ASTM F2656-07. They're also going to tell you that it needs to be made of cast iron, which I don't know many that are, if any, and has to be a height of 42 inches with a neck diameter of 10 and a half.
So when I look at this, I go back and I contact the owner and the architect and the engineer and I ask some pointed questions on there, because if you're looking at 2656-07 with a cast iron one that's got to withstand a 30 mile an hour test, what's the penetration? How far has it got to go? Not to mention, why is it going to meet 07? Why can't it meet 15? Go up in the standard, not backwards. And why are they still calling it K4 instead of M30? So there's a lot of things that you find when you're going through a lot of these specifications that, to be honest with you, when I talk to people, they don't want to know. I'll talk to GCs or people that are bidding it, they're like, "Well, can't you just give me something that meets this?" Well, maybe. I know a couple companies that have a lot of stuff that'll need it, but are you going to have somebody coming that's going to bid a rubber cone that meets that standard at a P4? I don't know at this point.
So to me, I look at it and say, "Okay, how do I do this on a consulting side of things?" I start looking at, what's the product choice? How do I fit the ASTM ratings, which is all I want to talk about right now, and whether it's 18, 15, or 20, if we want to go up to 20, into my location? So first thing I do when I talk to the architect, engineer, or even go meet an owner on a site is I look at the surroundings. One type of barrier does not fit all applications. You don't want to put a wedge barrier in a city street. It's just not logical to do. It's a great barrier, it's shallow amount, it'll stop the vehicle, but it also has an open pit where people walking could fall into it. So you've got to look at, what barrier fits that application?
What's the location? Is it commercial? Industrial? Is it a city street? Are you working with the DOD? Do you need ADA access for pedestrians? What type of climate are you living in? Especially when you're talking about active bollards, climate's always huge. What do you define as your primary threat? Terrorism? Distracted driving? Drunk driving? Other medical issues? Is it road rage? Is it a upset employee? I mean you name it, there's a ton of reasons, so what's your primary threat? And what would you consider your primary threat vehicle? There's a lot of cities nowadays that are calling up and saying, "I need an M50 barrier for my city." Well, what's your threat? "Well, I'm worried about the SUV, the guy in the SUV running down towards a parade." Okay, well then it's not an M50 at that point, it's not a 15,000 pound vehicle, your threat's a 5,000 pound pickup.
And that comes into play a lot when you're looking at design and you're looking at what kind of money do they have to spend? Because you can get a lot more for your money if you can put out a PU50 or a PU30 or an S30 on the F3016 and be able to stop a 5,000 pound vehicle going 30, 40, or 50 miles an hour, you're cutting your cost in half. So you can double what you get. How often do the barriers need to be deployed if they're active, or even if they're removable? Are they nightly? Are they weekly? Is it just for events? You name it, I mean especially when you're looking at removable bollards, if you leave them in there for too long without taking them out because you don't do it but once a year, those could be tough to pull in and out after a while. So you want them to be moved. And if it's active vehicle barriers, you absolutely want to exercise them.
Will the location change due to venue type? Specific festivals, evenings, weekends, nightclubs, restaurant districts. We're running into a ton of these as consultants nowadays. It's not all military anymore, it's not all petrochemical. I get calls probably three times a week from different cities and towns looking for being able to protect specific districts. Do you need vehicle access during these times? Do you need emergency vehicles in, delivery trucks? Is it a restaurant or a nightclub area? Do you have to bring in VIPs or band access, valet? All of that. You don't want to stop people from having a great time and you don't want to stop them from having a normal experience like they do now to pull up and valet a car, but you want to be able to protect it. So that changes what kind of a product you might want to select. And what's your budget? What product maximizes your budget? What's the performance? And can you prioritize the areas? Just in case it's a large project and you go, "Well, if we do this area first and your next budget for next year, then we do this one, then we do this one," you can get a lot more for your money.
So to me, why hire a consultant and talk about all this stuff? Just because we don't want this to become you. Any questions? Matt, I'll shove it back over to you.
Matt Morgan: All right. Thanks, Jeff. Again, really interesting. And I think as we move through that presentation, you can see the track record of changes in development and the confusion that it can bring in, but at the end of the day, there's just a lot to know and it does get pretty intimidating. But if you don't get this right, you're going to end up jeopardizing projects and people's lives and property. Correct?
Jeff Halaut: Absolutely. And that's what I said earlier. There's so many projects out there that they don't specify the penetration rating, so they don't necessarily get the product that they need for the protection they're desiring. They get something that's not going to work.
Matt Morgan: Yep. Yep. Well, thank you, Jeff. Without further delay, let me introduce our other expert for today's discussion. We're fortunate to have Mr. Henning Olsson with us from Calspan. He is the Senior Director of Technology at Calspan's Mobility, Safety, and Performance Campus in Buffalo, New York. He received his Bachelor's degree and I'm going to read this because, man, this guy's got more degrees than a thermometer. He's got, okay, he received his Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Dartmouth College and his Master's degree in Automated Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. His background is in testing, analysis, and simulation in the automotive industry. And at Calspan, he works closely with customers to apply testing and simulation technologies to bring us new and innovative products. Welcome Henning. How are you, man?
Henning Olsson: I'm good. Thank you for having me on board here. I think Jeff covered a lot of really good stuff here in the first half hour and I think we'll have a good discussion here moving forward.
Matt Morgan: Yeah, I'm going to kick it off with a couple of questions of my own just because, again, there's so much out there and again, we have ASTM 2656-07, 15, 18, 20 now, and there's a lot of information that gets moved around and confused. In general now, what is the testing industry, for example Calspan and its counterparts, what are you testing to essentially as a general rule? Is that a fair question?
Henning Olsson: Yeah, I think so. I mean obviously as Jeff's shown, there is a number of different standards, 2656 is obviously the most recent one and that's what most people would want to test to. One aspect of this is the DOD list for the US Army Corps of engineers, PDC, Protective Design Center, they maintain a list of systems for various DOD installs. They actually only, any test that's done after April 2020 must be done to the -20 standard. So they do not accept any products that have been tested in an earlier standard.
And as Jeff mentioned with the change in 2020, when the reference point got moved upwards or sort of forward to the attack side, it's becoming more challenging, right? So it is a more challenging standard to test to, but that's the only one that they will accept now. In the private sector, there might be more flexibility, but it's obviously, as Jeff said, very important to understand what does these ratings mean and what is actually the penetration that you are getting with different products? And what is needed for that specific site? What are you trying to protect and what kind of setbacks can you work with?
Matt Morgan: Right. Right. Okay. I'm going to move over to questions in Q&A. I'm going to start with a fairly basic one. Jeff, I'm going to hand this over to you. I think you're going to appreciate this. This is from an anonymous attendee and the question is, I heard that K is for military and M is for civilian. Is this true? And why don't you give us a little bit of background on this? Because I am familiar with this topic and I think your clarification actually will be rather helpful for everyone.
Jeff Halaut: I am familiar with the topic. The K rating honestly was strictly a DOS standard, so it was more federal government. When they handed it off to ASTM, K went away. So M is not just civilian it's military now. When you see a military spec out there, it's asking for an M50 or an M30 or an M40, not many of the military specs would actually ask for a K rating. I actually see more civilian specs out there asking for a K rating than I do military. So it was just a difference in the standard. Again, they didn't change the standard, they didn't even move the type of truck, the weight of the truck, the speed of the truck. The only thing that moved was the penetration and that was from the L2 to the P2 and the L1 to the P3, ASTM added more distance to it. So, I mean no, it does not mean, K is not military and M is not civilian.
Matt Morgan: Good. Good. And I think it's just good to clarify that because there is a tremendous amount of information and data out there and things and terminology gets thrown around and misconstrued, so I actually think that's a fairly fair question to ask, because it did end up being on some social platforms and I think it might have caused a little bit of confusion. Yeah?
Jeff Halaut: It was on a social platform. It was thrown across LinkedIn for a while and it did cause a lot of confusion.
Matt Morgan: Okay. All right. Next question. A lot of barriers have been in place for decades. Do any of the standards talk about how long the certification lasts? Henning, why don't you take that one?
Henning Olsson: Yeah, no, that's a good question. So the actual... If I take F2656 as an example here, it's actually specifically a crash test standard, right? It only looks at, what is the performance of this product when it's new? So there's obviously a gray zone there where we having bollards and wedges and various systems out deployed in the field today that have 10, 20, 30 years. And I think, Jeff, you've obviously seen more in life, real installs, and I'm sure you've seen some aspects there, but the actual test data itself is as a new product, a brand new test article. It's not something that's been in service, even though you could arguably test something that's been in service for a long time, but that's not required.
Jeff Halaut: Yeah. I don't think-
Matt Morgan: Jeff, do you have anything you want to add to that, Jeff?
Jeff Halaut: Yeah. I mean there's no defined date, but I mean if you look at some barriers that are not galvanized, for instance, or coded right, that metal only lasts so long before it starts to rust. If a barrier's taken care of, if it's a fixed bollard for instance and it was galvanized and it was in the ground and it's maintained and it's coded every couple of years, it has a chance to last a lot longer than something that hasn't been. And it also goes to, how many times has it been hit? I mean we've got bollards out there that have taken 10 and 15 mile an hour hits from cars and they don't even look like they have a scratch on them, but does it weaken the metal at that point? So, there's no way to determine how long that certification's going to last as far as I know.
Henning Olsson: Correct. Yeah. And maybe want to mention that too, that when you actually, I guess if you go to your website there and Matt, you have videos of actually crash tests available on the website. So for those of you that haven't seen a crash test, you're able to see high speed video of crash test there. And it can be pretty interesting to see if you haven't seen that before, because a lot of what happens, take a bollard for example, it's a pipe sticking out of the ground, but really where a lot of magic is we can't see, right? It's underground, it's in the foundation and the interface between the bollard and the foundation and how the foundation interacts with the ground around it. So there are obviously aspects there too that, for something to hold up for a long time, and it means not only what we can see needs to hold up, but actual structure underground needs to hold up as well. So I think it's a super interesting question, but I don't know if there's any, there's no real work being done in that field that I'm aware of.
Matt Morgan: Right. Okay. All right. Next question. Let's see. Okay. I'm going to throw this to you, Henning, but Jeff, you're coming in right behind him. And this is from Curtis Scott, so Curtis, thanks for your question. Can you describe the engineering analysis process you do to engineer a new barrier?
Henning Olsson: I mean I think we can certainly talk about it from how evaluating the crash performance of it, because that's usually where we come in. We're an independent lab, we don't design products, we help evaluate their performance. So I'll let Jeff go after me here because he has more experience in the actual design of a system, but what we are looking at is obviously what our system has to do is it has to absorb a lot of kinetic energy from the vehicle that is hitting that and how that is being reacted through its components, through structures, down to its foundation. Typically a lot of that work will be, it's high school physics to start with really, looking at, where does that energy go? Bending moments? How are they being reacted?
And then what today, you go from your high school math on the back of an envelope, finite element analysis will be a very useful tool in evaluating different designs and seeing, what's my load path? What kind of materials am I working with? What constraints am I working with? Foundation depth and so on. And then usually a lot of that is being done by the manufacturers themselves before you get to a point where the confidence level is high enough that like, "You know what? I think we have something that will actually pass the test or get a P1 rating," if that's the target. And then this sort of testing comes out.
Quite often though, I wouldn't say quite often, but occasionally you'll have a crash test that doesn't meet your target. Let's say you want a P1, but you come up a little bit, you have a little bit too much penetration, you can't get to P1. At that point, it's pretty common to employ finite element analysis, so basically doing a virtual crash test in the computer simulating the forces and the deflections to really understand what went wrong, why-
Matt Morgan: So you're talking about, just very quickly for everyone and for myself, you're talking about when they're going after a P1 rating, which is one meter or less, and let's say they hit a meter plus 8, 10, 12 inches or whatever, and so it doesn't make that P1 rating?
Henning Olsson: Right. So then [inaudible 00:41:44] engineering methodology, engineering analysis is this finite element analysis that can be then done post crash test, because what you can do now is now you can actually make sure that your finite element analysis correlates with your crash test, but now you can actually start making changes to your design and understand, "Okay, where do we need to beef up this design to actually improve my chances of getting a P1 rating?" So, that's where the boundary between actual physical testing and what we call virtual testing or simulation, they start to blend, and that's really where you can get some efficiencies in getting products out to market. Jeff, you obviously have more experience actually with the design piece of it.
Jeff Halaut: Right. Well, and I saw one of the ones in the chat, it's pretty much asked the same question about engineering crash tested. To me, almost every barrier that's put out in the field is, in a way, an engineered barrier, because it's not going to be installed exactly the same way, it's not going to be hit maybe at a 90 degree angle at 49.98 miles per hour with a 15,000 pound vehicle dead in the center. It might be off center, it might be hitting at 60 or 70 or 80 degrees. The best you can do is test to the highest standard, which is that 90 degrees, putting the maximum load on that bollard and see where it comes out. So almost every barrier that's put in the ground on a city street or in front of a building is pretty much an engineered barrier, because you're not going to have the same ground conditions and the ground might not be level, it might be on an incline, might be on a decline, you might come up a curb.
So there's changes in environment everywhere. That's why, when I prefaced what I said, I will recommend an engineered barrier if I have somebody that's gone out and tested, for instance, an M50 P1 and passed that test. And then I got a customer that says, "Well, I only need an M30 P1." I trust that guy going, "Hey, I've got this M50 P1. Here is all my engineering analysis. Here's all the data." Now let me take that data and go, "Okay. If I dumb it down to here and run the same test, oh yeah, it'll pass an M50 or it'll pass an M30 P1."
I know people want tested stuff and I know that the test labs don't mind that at all, but when you're looking at $70,000 a test, sometimes plus, manufacturers go, "Maybe I can test one or two and engineer my way into some of these other ones."
Matt Morgan: Yep. Budget questions definitely playing into it. And that is a good lead in to the next question, which is coming from Rob Ryder. How should a city that is permitting lots of outdoor dining select an appropriate barrier? Jeff, why don't you take that one?
Jeff Halaut: Again, it's back to the table I showed when I go out there and look at it. Where are they putting the dining? Are they putting it on the street? Are they putting it on a sidewalk? Is there a potential to... Is it going to be permanent? Are they going to leave it there forever? Are they going to turn it into a sidewalk cafe? Are they going to take it down during certain times of the year where they can't use permanent barriers? I mean a permanent bollard structure is always the best to me with the proper standoff, but portable barriers have their place, especially in street fairs and everything else when you've got a bunch of food trucks out and everything.
But getting the proper standoff, putting them in the proper configuration. I see a lot of them out there where it was crash tested to an M30 with a P2 or a P3 rating, let's just say a P2, so it had a maximum of 23 foot of penetration, and they put it five feet away from the building. And instead of tying four or five of them together, which they did for the crash test, they put two. At that point, it's just a false sense of security. You might as well just throw out a K-rail. So how should they go about it? And I don't know about the permitting, permitting lots of outdoor dining. Okay. So it's not permitting, it's permitting a lot of... The appropriate barrier is going to be depending on the site and the location, it's just making sure that you have the right people to go out there and evaluate that for you.
Henning Olsson: And I think another topic on this that I think is relevant too, we've focused primarily on F2656 here today, but the history of that one, of that test standard and those performance criteria for those kind of products tested to that, were never really intended in its inception to protect the scenario of an outdoor dining. And I think there was some healthy discussion on this at the ASTM meeting here earlier this week about exactly this, is that we have a different... And I think I saw a question on that here as well, there is probably room or an opportunity to work on a performance standard and ultimately products that allows to protect these kind of new scenarios that are coming up where we have an errant vehicle either going down a street fair or outdoor dining or some of these things where we don't necessarily need, let's say, a "military grade", and I used that in quotation marks here, but a military grade type product, because they are also more expensive, right? The beefier the product, the more expensive it is and we've all heard material costs going out the roof.
So I think there's opportunities there that the industry can help participate too in, what are we trying to protect and what are some of the requirements that we would want to build into a performance standard or a test standard?
Matt Morgan: Okay, good. All right. Next question is from Greg Pingatore. Can you describe the importance of conducting a vehicle vector analysis prior to selecting a device? Jeff?
Jeff Halaut: I think it's highly important, but I mean before that, we got to identify what the owner believes the threat is. If the owner believes the threat is a pickup truck, then we do a vector analysis for a pickup truck. If they believe it's a 15,000 pound vehicle or a flat bet or a box truck and are more worried about terrorism, then you look at the vector analysis for that. I remember doing a bunch that were M30 and M50 and they wanted to, their concern was a 15,000 pound vehicle and we put it in an M30 and they're like, "Well, I can get my Corvette up to 80 miles an hour coming around this corner." Doesn't have the same punch as a 15,000 pound vehicle. It's, what's your threat vehicle to perform that analysis? There's a good rule of thumb is always go up one. If you look at it and you think you can get up to it, the best the truck can get up to is 30 miles an hour, put it in an M40. It's-
Matt Morgan: Yeah. That makes sense.
Jeff Halaut: Because somebody might be a better driver, I don't know, or have better tires or whatever. So it is important, but it's not ultimately the most important thing I think.
Matt Morgan: All right. All right. Next question. With the trend toward protecting people in crowded spaces rather than just keeping bombs away from buildings, do you foresee any changes to the standards in penetration distances?
Jeff Halaut: Yes. As a matter of fact, that was one of the huge topics we had at ASTM and I think it took up almost an hour worth of our discussions and it was multifaceted. So you heard me say that the original DOS standard measured from the front bumper, where the new one measures from the bed, and even with a pickup truck, the F2656 measures from the back of the engine block, not from the front bumper. So you have to account for an extra four feet or five feet or eight feet of penetration. So we talked about removing one, and Henning brought this up and it was a great suggestion, leaving P1, because it's less than one meter.
And then after that, possibly one, maybe two designations after that, a P2-1.3, which says, "Okay, it was a penetration of 1.3." And then after that saying, "But that 1.3 could actually be 12 feet because it's measuring from the bed, not from the bumper." So we want to give everybody the right information and I think that's coming in the next revision of ASTM from what I was understanding and Henning, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's going to be one of the major changes in the 2023 or 2022 version, it's going to be actual penetrations versus a P1, P2, P3, P4.
Henning Olsson: Right. No, exactly. And I think you sort of touched on that, the reason why the reference point on the truck in 2656 is what it is, at the front of the bed, is that's where an IED would be positioned on a terrorist vehicle attack scenario. Whereas what we're talking about now with this question is, how are we protecting people from an errant vehicle? And then in those cases, we are less concerned maybe what's on the flatbed, we're worried about, is this 100 pound bumper going to come flying in eye height-
Matt Morgan: Right. The truck is the weapon at that point, right?
Henning Olsson: Exactly. Exactly. And a little bit out of scope for our discussion here today, but if you look at some of the international standards, [inaudible 00:52:02] actually also look at debris because sometimes what happens in these crashes is that the vehicle itself, parts of it may separate and you have a piece of debris flying. So they're also looking at the downstream debris field, what does that look like? Which potentially could be more relevant or more of interest when you're looking at protecting people near an impact, as opposed to just protecting against an IED.
Matt Morgan: Right. Right. Okay. Good. All right. Next question. This is from Katie Bond. Katie, thank you. What efforts are being taken to educate the industry on the importance of integrating barrier bollard security with a CPTED strategy? It seems the two aren't brought together enough, but if implementing CPTED strategy, it's natural to bring barriers into that conversation. Yeah? Henning, do you want to take that?
Henning Olsson: I think, yeah, this is probably more on the total integration piece, right? So I'll let Jeff go first.
Jeff Halaut: I think right now the biggest effort we're doing is not really through ASTM. ASTM's setting the standard. We're trying to push a lot of the education portion of this through SIA and CIA and some of the other organizations that we've gotten industry leaders and industry people together to write white papers that talk about whether it's penetration, whether it's talking about the type of barriers, whether you're putting in a bump bollard in front of a convenience store, versus doing this, the standard hasn't changed, the rules haven't changed. There is really no rules. It's kind of the wild west.
But when you look at ADA 20 years ago, everyone said, "ADA's not going to take off." Now it just keep getting bigger. I mean I think California and in Nevada, it's a mandatory 48 inch clear opening everywhere. So, it is education, it's going to take time, but I think if we can get some of the industry organizations like the Security Industry Association, the SIAs of the world to start pushing it, especially on Capitol Hill and with their power through there in Congress, then we can make some better changes on that at that point.
Matt Morgan: All right. Good. And now we're moving into a new question and we're going to change gears just a little bit. We're going to get... Well, I don't want to call it controversial, but I think it's a topic that came up at the ASTM meetings, I think it was a really good discussion, and I think perhaps the time has come to have more public conversations about this. But first I'll start with a question, this is from Michael Rodriguez, how is the ASTM addressing old crash-tested barriers that would not have the same rating or even pass with the newer standards? And this goes to something we were kind of talking about, which honestly it's a reference to K ratings and how long they have been in play. They've basically been replaced for quite some time. Henning, I don't think Calspan has tested to K ratings for quite a long time. Let's jump into this subject and talk about it a little bit.
Henning Olsson: Yeah. Maybe first say that ASTM, it's a test standard, right? ASTM, the organization, ASTM International, they develop test standards or standards, in this case a test standard. So I don't think the standard itself says anything about how we're going to use an old test result or a new test result. So it comes down to government users, so we talked about the state department, we talked about the DOD and the Protective Design Center. I think they obviously have a list of crash-tested barriers that have been tested all the way back into the 80s and there are barriers on that list today that have a K rating or 2656-07 rating that's still on there.
I think it's fair to say that there are several of those products that if they were tested today to today's -20 standard, they would not receive a P1 rating. I think that's a pretty fair statement to make, just by looking at how not only the test standard itself has become more stringent, our reference points are different. Another factor is the trucks are changing too, right? The trucks that are built today, the trucks that we crash test with are generally newer trucks than the trucks that were tested 20, 25 years ago were even longer. So the trucks themself are stronger, let's say it like that. So you are basically putting more load into the barrier system itself.
And so that's a great question. At Calspan, we also do vehicle crash testing for occupant safety. So I'm sure all of you here are familiar with like a "five star" crash rated car, right? And every single manufacturer will say, "Hey, buy my new SUV. It's a five star crash rating." If you go out and buy a new vehicle for your 16 year old, you will probably want to make sure it's a five star crash-tested car, right? Are you going to buy a five star 2020 model year or are you going to buy a five star 1994 model year? Because that's when NHTSA came out with the five star rating. Obviously they're both five star, but NHTSA's crash test standards have changed over that time and it's exactly the same thing here.
A system that had "highest rating" in the 80s will most likely not have the highest rating today. So I think that's something to consider when you're specifying the systems, right? Because you're basically specifying a system that was tested to a much older standard that is not as stringent as today's standards.
Matt Morgan: Right. Jeff?
Jeff Halaut: Well, I mean just to add, I think in our discussions, and like he said, ASTM is just writing the standards. That's what we're on the committees for is saying, "Okay, what do we think it should be?" Like changing the penetration to actuals and stuff like that. As far as barriers that are out there, put it out in my presentation, it's not stopping a manufacturer from going, "Hey, I got a crash-tested barrier," and selling it, whether it meets the standard or not. There's a national electric code, the NEC that goes on, there's nothing for barriers or anything like that at this point. So I don't see that changing anytime soon. I would like to say yes, but I think it's going to be a long haul to get some of those removed.
Henning Olsson: And probably what's going to happen is there's going to be some sort of an event where something happens, where someone has specified a bollard or a barrier or something that perhaps didn't meet the performance that was required, and unfortunately, I think that's what it's going to take until we see something here. So I guess on the private side and where people are specifying these things, I think it just comes down to education and really understanding what you're specifying, right? So...
Matt Morgan: Yeah, exactly. I mean I think it's going to get driven by the architects, the engineers, the procurement groups that better understand these rating classifications, in terms of K ratings being, let's just call it older, more mature rating versus an ASTM, which is taken into account the changes in vehicle manufacturing and the way they're built and the transfer that those vehicles can transfer energy into that barrier, that kind of thing.
So, it will be driven by the architects and the engineers at this point. And that's up to all of us to make sure that we sing off the same hymn sheet and just kept singing it over and over and over until it starts to really take a better hold, because you still see, like Jeff last week, there you saw it, a K rating request. Yeah?
Jeff Halaut: To an 07 standard, so with no penetration, with no penetration being told, so-
Matt Morgan: And made out of cast iron, so there you go. Yeah, exactly. Okay.
Okay. Listen, there are some more questions, but we've sort of bringing this thing into a close and so I'm going to close everything out. We do have a questionnaire for people. We hope everyone will fill out that questionnaire because it really helps us put on more talks like this one that are poignant and relevant to our industry. So please do fill it out if you get the opportunity.
Jeff, Henning, I want to thank you both for being here and clarifying a very confusing topic. It's been a real pleasure and I hope we can continue working together with you as Protogetic, as consultants and testing facilities, and improving the level of education out there for our fellow architects and engineers and so they can be making more qualified decisions for the future and all of our safety for that matter. Yeah?
Jeff Halaut: Absolutely. Thanks Matt. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it.
Matt Morgan: All right. Great. Well, thank you everyone. Again, it's been another great Proto-Talk. It's been a pleasure. Again I'd like to thank ARX Perimeter, our sponsor for today. Please go and check out their products at protogetic.com. Other than that, we'll see everybody at the next Proto-Talk. In the meantime, stay safe and have a great, great day. Bye-bye.