Mend Bridges, Don't Build Them

While President Obama has pledged himself toward the passage of a nearly one trillion dollar economic stimulus plan, a strong argument could be made that the economic recovery package should focus more squarely on infrastructure repair rather than breaking ground on "shovel-ready" new projects.
 
"The roadworthiness of our nation's two hundred thousand existing metal bridges is a serious problem that does not receive nearly enough attention," says Marybeth Miceli, Chief Operating Officer of MATECH Corp, formerly Material Technologies, Inc., a Los Angeles-based engineering, research and development company that specializes in technologies that measure microscopic fractures in metal structures and monitor metal fatigue. "The August 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse that resulted in thirteen deaths and nearly 150 injuries was only the most infamous recent large-scale bridge disaster."

There have been 1,500 partial or total bridge collapses between 1966 and 2005, a staggering average of one bridge every ten days, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. Part of the reason for this is because while our nation's bridges are generally designed to have a fifty-year lifespan before major rehabilitation, most U.S. bridges are over fifty years old and were not designed to handle current traffic and weight bearing levels.

While the National Bridge Inventory (NBI) requires biennial inspection, as mandated by National Bridge Inspection Standards, what may be surprising to many is that "subjective visual inspection" is the most commonly used inspection method, one that misses approximately 90% of fatigue cracks.

MATECH has pioneered a better way. The company's proprietary Electrochemical Fatigue Sensor (EFS) is a nondestructive inspection technology is used to determine if actively growing fatigue cracks are present in bridges and other structures. The technology acts something like an EKG: a small voltage is applied and the system subsequently monitors signal abnormalities that indicate growing cracks, just as abnormalities in an EKG reading might indicate serious heart problems. MATECH's solution is the only field-testing device able to find growing cracks in structural members as small as 0.01 inches in length and some non-surface breaking cracks.

"The technology is easy to use and is currently being deployed on more than forty bridges worldwide," says Ms. Miceli. "Especially as the nation girds itself for infrastructure renewal, this solution can contribute toward improving public safety, prioritizing repair work, and stretching taxpayer dollars." For more information visit.