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1 PDH · about 60 minutes · Course no. BR-C02 · Instructor: Michael Craig, PE
Michael Craig, PE is Senior Vice President and Southeast Director at Strinteg Corporation, leading bridge inspection and structural engineering across eight states and Puerto Rico. In 27+ years he has inspected over 4,000 structures and completed 3,000+ load ratings and 160+ load tests. He has managed repair and preservation design for complex bridges, including cable-stayed bridges. He holds PE licenses in twelve states, DC and Puerto Rico, SPRAT Level 1, and FAA Part 107 credentials.
Patching concrete is the most common repair on the bridge inventory, and one of the most often redone. A patch that debonds, cracks or sets off new corrosion around its edges a few years later costs more than the original work, plus a second lane closure. This course walks through the full repair sequence for reinforced concrete bridge members: evaluating and categorizing the damage, removing concrete and treating the reinforcement, preparing the substrate, choosing a repair material, placing and curing it, and accepting the work. It also covers the ring-anode (halo) effect, which makes chloride-contaminated members corrode faster next to new patches, and the tools used to limit it, such as embedded galvanic anodes. It also covers crack injection, deck repairs, hydrodemolition and inspection of the finished work. The main sources are TxDOT's Concrete Repair Manual (Chapters 2 and 3, read online), the Michigan DOT Construction Manual Section 712 on concrete bridge rehabilitation, ACI TechNote 364.6T-02 on concrete removal around corroded reinforcing steel, the FHWA Bridge Preservation Guide (Spring 2018) and the FHWA/NHI Underwater Bridge Repair, Rehabilitation, and Countermeasures reference manual (FHWA-NHI-10-029). Agency-specific values are reported as that agency's requirements, not as national rules. Worked numbers in the examples are illustrative and were computed for this course, not taken from a real bridge. The ACI 546R and ACI 345.1R guides in the catalog are paywalled and were not reviewed, so no requirement is quoted from them.