Guard rails, guardrails, railings or protective guarding, in general, are a boundary feature and may be a means to prevent or deter access to dangerous or off-limits areas while allowing more light and visibility than a fence. Common shapes are flat, rounded edge, and tubular in horizontal railings, whereas tetraform spear-headed or ball-finialed are most common in vertical railings around homes. Inside the home, at the edge of stairs or balconies, they are called balustrades, especially when of a more elaborate design. Park and garden railings commonly in metalworking feature swirls, leaves, plate metal areas and/or motifs particularly on and beside gates.
High-security railings (particularly if in flat metal then a type of palisade) may instead feature jagged points and most metals are well-suited to anti-climb paint.
A handrail is less restrictive on its own than a guard rail and provides support.
Public safety
Many public spaces are fitted with guard rails as a means of protection against accidental falls. Any abrupt change in elevation where the higher portion is accessible makes a fall possible. Due to this responsibility and liability, rails are placed to protect people using the premises. Guardrails in the US are generally required by code where there is a drop of or more.
Examples of this are both architectural and environmental. Environmental guard rails are placed along hiking trails where adjacent terrain is steep. Railings may also be located at scenic overlooks.
Guard rails in buildings can be numerous, and are required by building codes in many circumstances. Handrails along stairways may be supported by balusters forming a balustrade, and catwalks (a type of footbridge) and balconies are also lined with them. An example of a common residential guard rail (US) or handrail (Brit.) is a wood railing around a deck or patio. In the US this is typically built on-site from pressure-treated lumber featuring a simple design of vertical balusters spaced every , demonstrating compliance with building codes (standards).
Cable railings typically use stainless steel cables strung horizontally. Glass balusters and glass panels open the view while still providing safety, as at the Grand Canyon Skywalk. With the increasing popularity of composite lumber for decking, manufacturers are providing composite railing components. Wrought iron is another choice that is traditional and sturdy. Decorative examples are considered ironwork.
Building codes also require that no opening in a guard be of a size such that a sphere may pass. There are three exceptions according to the 2003 International Building Code Section 1012.3 which allow openings to not exceed depending on occupancy groups or special areas.
The architect Alvar Aalto imaginatively used handrails representing social stability. The guard rails of an observation tower such as the Space Needle or Eiffel Tower become exaggerated to the point of becoming a fence or cage. This is also done on bridges and overpasses to prevent accidents and suicides.
Facility safety
The majority of safety guardrails used in industrial workplaces are made from fabricated steel. Steel guardrail was originally developed by Armco (The American Rolling Mill Company) in 1933 as highway guardrail but is often used in the factories and warehouses of the industrial sector, despite not being intended for this application. Simultaneously, another version of steel guardrail was developed by Kee Clamp Steel for restraining cattle in the agriculture industry, this was released in 1934 and, like Armco guardrail, is still often used in industrial environments. Box beam steel and I-beam steel are other examples of fabricated steel commonly used to make safety guardrails.
As governments around the world courted the voting power of working people and trade unions in the 1980s, the health and safety rights of workers became of greater importance. This set the governmental procedures in motion that would see a flurry of regulations and legislation around workplace safety being introduced in industrialized countries in the 1990s. In the US and UK, these introductions, combined with the demonstrable success of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970 (US), and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (UK), led to workplace safety being taken more seriously at industrial facilities. Businesses worldwide began to see the value of effective workplace safety, in both the direct commercial sense of protecting assets, but also in the improved productivity levels of a protected workforce. Part of this increase in desire for industrial workplace protection, was a growth in demand for safety guardrails.
In the US, under OSHA Standard 1910.28(b)(15), employees who work on surfaces that are or higher off of the ground must have personal fall protection systems in place, such as handrails or guardrails. Great Britain's Work at Height Regulations 2005 by contrast apply to any work at height, defined functionally rather than quantitatively as any location, even at or below ground level, where a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury. Although the OSHA standard calls for a guardrail or guardrail system to protect workers on elevated work areas, current industry terminology would refer to that type of safety system as a handrail system or safety rail system.
The term "guardrail" as used in industry and distribution facilities refers to floor mounted systems consisting of horizontal rails attached to upright posts that resemble outdoor highway guardrail. The facility safety guardrails control in-plant vehicular traffic and protect areas where errant vehicle contact may cause harm to property or personnel. Common uses for guardrail systems may be along an aisle or building wall. Often guardrails are placed around equipment installations to prevent inadvertent contact from lift trucks. The guardrail provides a safety barrier preventing lift trucks or other in-plant vehicles from traveling into equipment, building walls, or personnel.
There are different types of "industrial" or "facility safety" guardrail systems, each with its own advantages.
Types of guardrail
Steel ribbed rail
The most common industrial or facility safety guardrail systems are constructed of steel, where the upright posts are made of heavy wall steel tubing-either round or square, with heavy gauge ribbed steel rails mechanically attached to the uprights by bolts or other fasteners. The uprights may be welded to baseplates and anchored to the floor, or set and concreted into the floor. In industrial and distribution facilities the steel guardrail systems provide solid protection for property and personnel by restricting and controlling where in-plant vehicular traffic may operate. These guardrail systems also serve as a warning for people to be aware of hazardous in facility vehicular traffic. Some facility safety steel guardrail systems utilize one horizontal rail, where others employ two or three rails. While a single rail safety guardrail located some above floor level may be sufficient to control vehicle traffic, it could present a trip hazard to pedestrians since it is not as noticeable as a double or triple guardrail system where the top rail is some above the floor level.
Manufacturers produce several grades of steel safety guardrail. Each grade is suited to a different application which may be determined by size and type of vehicles used in the facility, the volume of traffic to be controlled, or the value/risk associated with the areas being guarded.
Polymer guardrail
In 1992 a yellow polymer cover sleeve for steel guardrails was introduced by Ideal Shield, a Detroit-based company which enhanced the visibility of steel safety guardrails in industrial environments and removed the need for continual repainting. This polymer cover was the beginning of polymer guardrail in the industrial environment. At the turn of the 21st century, several companies developed safety products constructed with polymer designed specifically for industrial environments and in 2001 a dedicated industrial alternative to steel guardrail was invented by A-SAFE, a British-based company, and thus the first fixed flexible polymer safety guardrail was introduced to the market. In the early 2000s, an Italian company added a version of a polymer bumper providing small bumpers for walls and equipment in the food industry. A Belgian company also introduced a flexible barrier in 2010 and in 2014 a US based company introduced a hybrid polymer-steel guardrail for industrial environments.
There are many types of polymer used in manufacturing safety guardrail. Polymer grains may be blended as part of the production process in order to enhance the natural properties of polymer in different ways. The most common types of polymer used are: polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Using these types of polymer, there are three basic design philosophies for polymer guardrails:
Impact dispersal, which applies multi-component engineering to enable guardrails to bend on impact, absorbing and dispersing energy, before returning to their original shape. Hybrid, which features a steel core encased in polymer. Central fix, which utilizes a solid polymer post fixed into the ground with cement and steel subterranean fixings.
The polymer impact dispersal safety guardrail design offers an advantage over steel guardrails. Steel guardrails, if impacted with sufficient energy, will permanently deform and require repair or replacement to the impacting vehicle, the guardrail itself, and even the floor substrate; whereas the impact dispersal safety guardrail design allows the guardrail to bend on impact, disperse the energy, and return to its original shape, resulting in no damage to the guardrail or the impacting vehicle.
Test standards Until 2017 there were no accepted standards for how safety guardrail tests were conducted, or how the results were communicated. In 2017, the British Standards Institution (BSI) published the publicly available specification, PAS 13:2017 Code of Practice for safety barriers used in traffic management within workplace environments with test methods for safety barrier impact resilience (commonly referred to as PAS13). This outlines test method guidelines for comparing like-for-like guardrail products, as well as being the current best practice traffic management procedures for a workplace and providing a standard for the safety guardrails within them.
In the US, there is no ANSI standard for testing guardrails. Steel guardrail system manufacturers test their systems to withstand impacts from a load moving at , whereas manufacturers of polymer safety guardrail systems rate and test their products at varying impact levels due to variation in guardrail product systems they offer, which can range from simple low impact energy pedestrian guardrail systems to high impact energy industrial traffic guardrail systems. In order to standardize testing for both steel and polymer guardrails, the Protective Guarding Manufacturers Association (ProGMA) industry group of the Material Handling Industry (MHI) trade association is currently working with ANSI to develop an industry endorsed testing and reporting standard.
Automotive safety