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We were recently commissioned by  Magnetic Automation  to perform a crash simulation on one of their rising step barriers, using  Finite Element Analysis (FEA) . The rising step barrier is installed at site entry roads to prevent unauthorized vehicular access, and must be able to withstand the impact of a vehicle hitting the barrier at speed. Magnetic wanted to assess how their barrier design would perform to PAS68:2010, which is a standard test specification for impact testing of vehicle security barriers. In this case, the test involved a 7.5T truck hitting the barrier at 64km/h. FEA was chosen to assess the design due to the expense of a physical test, which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform. We used a deformable model of a full truck assembly to give the most realistic results possible. To simply impact the barrier with a rigid mass would transfer too much energy into the structure, and would lead to an over engineered desi...