Bridge Rating

With the new year approaching and the addition of poor weather the amount of bridge inspection has begun to decrease and I have been in the office most of the days this month.
This past week I have been working on a rating targeting the structural integrity of the ends of beams on a bridge in Rhode Island.
This rating is to analyze whether the beam end over the bearing will crippling or buckle with the section loss noted at the time of the inspection in October. Just checking the notes for section loss took hours, since the bridge has 27 spans and each span has around 9 to 15 rolled beams.
With a few more spans to complete I will soon know the out come of the analysis in the near future.

Soil Borings

After two weeks of inspecting soil borings in Dighton, I am back in the office to get back to doing work. Yesterday was my first inspection in over two weeks and I could not have asked for a bridge in better condition. The two span continuous weathered steel girder bridge spanned over the Pawcatuck River in Westerly Rhode Island. To conduct the inspection we used a 62 foot Under Bridge vehicle (UB) to inspect the underside of the bridge (which can be seen in the previous post.

The proposed Berkley-Dighton bridge will be a four span concrete arch, replacing the current steel truss posted at 3 ton.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkley%E2%80%93Dighton_Bridge

So far this month I have been busy inspecting and rating bridges throughout Rhode Island. It appears that later this month I will be staying in the Bay State to conduct soil boarings for the bridge which we are designing in Dighton, MA.
The concrete arch bridge will require soil borings which I will be in charge of inspecting. So this weekend I will be reviewing my information from my soil mechanics class from junior year.

New Job

I started my new job a few weeks ago and moved out of Boston to be closer to work. So far I have already inspected a seven span bridge which carried a six lane highway. I am enjoying the work I am doing and look forward growing in the field of Bridge Engineering. I will try to post some photos of the bridges that I have been inspecting, rating and designing as often as possible, to help build a portfolio of work for the future.

For more information about WSP Sells and WSP Group please see their website.
http://www.wspgroup.com/en/Welcome-to-WSP-SELLS/

Victory Highway Concrete Butted Box Beams

Today was my first inspection in Rhode Island where I inspected a simple span concrete butted box beam bridge. The bridge carries Victory Highway over Branch River in Burrillville. The bridge showed leakage between the butted box beams and reflective longitudinal cracks which form at the joints between the box beams. Today was also my first time using an under bridge inspection unit (UBIU) or snooper. 

After the inspection was finished we were able to make are way over to another bridge that was missing a typical photo. The arch is just down stream from a dam with fast and violent water rushing under it.