The development of a retrofit design aimed at retarding or eliminating fatigue crack growth in a large bridge can be a very difficult and expensive procedure. Analytical techniques frequently do not provide sufficient accuracy when applied to complex structural details. The Infrastructure Technology Institute (ITI) of Northwestern University, under contract to the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), recently applied experimental state-of-the-art NDE technology to the Interstate 80 bridge over the Sacramento River near Sacramento, California (Bryte Bend). Acoustic emission monitoring was applied in conjunction with strain gage monitoring to aid in characterizing the retrofits' effect on existing active fatigue cracks. The combined test results clearly showed that one retrofit design was superior to the other.

Date Published: 31 March 1998
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 3400, Structural Materials Technology III: An NDT Conference, (31 March 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.300116

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3400:
Structural Materials Technology III: An NDT Conference
Ronald D. Medlock; David C. Laffrey, Editor(s)