Alpha Rail Ltd

Summary

Alpha Rail Ltd manufactures pedestrian guardrail for different locations. The latter rails are manufactured according to the standard BS 7818: 1995. The SME carried out their own destructive tests many years ago, under previous company ownership, on a specially constructed test rig at their old factory site, but the raw data (pre the digital age!) has been lost and therefore they cannot  prove the latter for Class 2 B, as they have no proof that the test, according to the latter standards, has been performed, hence unable to provide information to their potential clients. ERDF TEM scoped to identify the test regime to verify the class of the pedestrian guardrail in question.

Issues to resolved 

The test regime for such verification would have to be looked for in BS 7818:1995 and/or further more standards. The resulting test for class 2B classification required complex calculations, simulation or physical testing (in an enclosed environment).

Action taken 

After analysing the respective standard, BS 7818:1995 the first part of the required test regime was done according to section 2.1.4.3 (a) and the results assessed with respect to section 2.1.4.4.

The second part of the test was done whereby a whole guardrail panel was taken into consideration in order to confirm the final diameter of the infills.

The result

Both parts of the test confirms that the 12mm infill being used by Alpha Rail Ltd does theoretically conform with BS 7818: 1995 and hence the proof to put forward. Percentage recovery = Percentage recovery after test = 99.6 % and maximum deflection at the end being 1.58 mm.

Next steps

“Alpha Rail are happy that the results backed up own knowledge that our product complied to the BS, following our own destructive tests we carried out a number of years ago, but unfortunately these tests documents have been lost during the company’s history of change of ownership and moving of factory site location”

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