Insights Of Bridge Preservation

Rise in number of vehicles with each passing year has affected the environment but it has also increased the load on nation’s bridges and roads. Extra load and other environmental factors like leaking joints or chloride penetration from salt water further damage these bridges and reduces their service life.

Much of the  infrastructure has been built in the United States at the beginning of twentieth century when cars were becoming more popular and transportation was becoming critical to an industrialized nation. But with passing decades, development of new infrastructures slowed down while the existing structures reached their mid and end of expected life. Fatal accidents like Silver Bridge collapse in 1967 in West Virginia and Mianus River Bridge collapse in 1983 in Connecticut have drawn the public and government attention towards the poor conditions of existing infrastructures like bridges, roads, tunnel, dams etc. and numerous inspection and bridge preservation programs came into action.

Bridge Preservation consists of Bridge inspection, through maintenance and timely repair which help in extending the service life of bridges. Bridge preservation is a systematic approach involving inspection and repairing of a bridge and its components with non destructive testing methods.

Bridge preservation program may include these following processes

• Deteriorated concrete repairs

• Bearing replacement

• Structural steel repairs

• Bridge superstructure Jacking

• Deck surface repairs

• Bridge joint replacements

• Pile repairs or replacements

• Concrete sealers or overlays 

Infrastructure Preservation Corporation (IPC) offers products and services using non destructive testing methods to assess structural stability of any infrastructure by finding any deterioration, cracks, voids, water intrusion etc. in bridge super-structure and sub-structure and provide condition assessment report with recommendations for the repair.

IPC’s inspections integrate modern technology and robotics with experienced bridge inspectors to supply quantitative data unlike anything seen before. Says Doug Thaler, Partner in IPC. Our quantitative results obtained from our in house patented modern technologies are easy to understand with its 2D and 3D graphical illustrations. The results provide the asset owners or department of transportation to better allocate assets, Thaler continued. Bridges are inspected on an every two year cycle with deficient bridges being inspected every year. Without integrating modern technology into the inspection process, bridges will continue to fail.  With non destructive testing methods being utilized on an entire bridge deck or post tension tendon, problems can be identified early and repairs can be prioritized to keep our infrastructure and public safe.  “Our team of expert and experience engineers and staff provides accurate condition assessment report of the whole structure and also the detailed report of the components like cable stays or post tension tendons, even high mast light poles. We also offer mechanical and electrical inspection of the movable bridges/draw bridges. Our emergency service gives you detailed report of your bridge or road in shortest time period and without interrupting the ongoing traffic on the bridge.

IPC offers greater safety to the public and the inspection crews during the bridge inspection with our non destructive testing technologies. With their advanced technologies, IPC is able to look out for any deteriorations visible to the naked eyes and also damage beneath the surface which are generally not found during visual inspection. Our automated devices saves time and labour during inspection and our inspector is able to check all the data in real time with our computerized outputs which are stored for later analysis and also to check deterioration progression from future inspections.

For further information about our services and products, leave us a message with your contact details on our website https://www.infrastructurepc.com/ and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Subscribe to our newsletter at our blog www.infrastructurepc.com/robotics to get the latest updates and visit our site to get all the information in detail(Ground PenetratingRadar).