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1 PDH · about 60 minutes · Course no. BR-ST03 · 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.
Steel bridge members get bent, twisted and buckled by over-height vehicle strikes, construction and handling mishaps, overloads, earthquakes and fires. Heat straightening lets an owner restore many of these members in place, often without replacing steel or shoring the span, if the repair is engineered rather than improvised. This course follows the FHWA Guide for Heat-Straightening of Damaged Steel Bridge Members (FHWA-IF-08-999, R. Richard Avent, August 2008), the final draft of the AASHTO guidelines, and notes where the newer FHWA Manual for Heat Straightening, Heat Curving and Cold Bending of Bridge Components (FHWA-HIF-23-003, March 2023) updates it. It covers how heat straightening works, the temperature limits by steel type, the vee, line, edge and spot heating patterns, restraint and jacking limits, how to measure damage and decide between repair and replacement, and how to specify and inspect the work. Temperature, strain and jacking limits are quoted from those two documents with their sections. Worked numbers in the examples are illustrative and computed for this course, not from a real bridge.