Terminal Ends

An untreated, exposed guardrail end presents an extreme roadside hazard capable of penetrating vehicle passenger compartments like a spear during head-on collisions. Guardrail terminal ends—also known as crash cushions, flared lead-ins, or buffer end treatments—are mandatory safety assemblies engineered to resolve this risk. Depending on roadway design speeds and crash-testing standards (such as AASHTO MASH or European EN 1317-4), terminal ends either smoothly redirect errant vehicles impacting at an angle or absorb kinetic energy during direct head-on impacts through controlled plastic deformation.

Terminal end systems are classified into non-gating and gating, energy-absorbing, and non-energy-absorbing configurations. For secondary roadways, industrial facilities, and parking perimeters operating at speeds under 60 km/h, traditional curved fishtail (winged) buffer ends provide a rounded 720 mm wide non-penetrating profile that caps the sharp corrugated beam edges. For high-speed expressways and tollways, modern tangent energy-absorbing terminals (such as ET-Plus, SKT, and MSKT type assemblies) feature an impact head housing internal shearing knives or extruding dies. When struck head-on by an errant vehicle, the impact head travels along the rail, progressively flattening and curling the W-beam panel outward while controlled break-away posts yield, gently decelerating the vehicle to a controlled stop.

In wide expressway medians and bifurcated exit ramps, bullnose terminals form an expansive semicircular wrap-around barrier that shields rigid fixed obstacles such as bridge piers, overhead gantry sign columns, and toll island foundations. Along mountainous cuts, buried-in-backslope terminals anchor the guardrail directly into rising rocky embankments to eliminate exposed end sections altogether.

Every terminal component undergoes post-fabrication hot-dip galvanizing conforming to ASTM A123 / ISO 1461 (550–1100 g/m² zinc coating), ensuring maximum corrosion resistance and durability across all climate zones.