Activities

The Midwest Bridge Working Group Winter 2005 meeting took place in Louisville, KY on December 8, 2005. The meeting brought together 61 DOT personnel and others from eleven states including NY and MA. The purpose of the MBWG is to provide a forum where DOT personnel can come together and share challenges and solutions to maintaining and inspecting bridges. The next MBWG meeting will be in May or June, 2006 in Evanston, IL.

The Spring 2005 Midwest Bridge Working Group Meeting was held on May 11th and 12th at the Infrastructure Technology Institute, in Evanston, IL. A special FHWA Bridge Inspection, Maintenance and Preservation Workshop was held on May 11th and was net-cast to 47 sites across the country. The regular MBWG meeting was held on May 12th. The purpose of the FHWA workshop was to provide group members with the latest information on the Federal bridge program and included topics such as the new Federal bridge inventory requirements and other bridge management information.

At the Acoustic Emission Working Group's annual meeting, held in Houston on May 9-11, ITI Chief Research Engineer Dave Prine presented "Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Steel Highway Bridges and Other Large Civil Structures." His presentation described AE techniques for dealing with such structural problems and also recounted three case studies: one on Oregon DOT Bridge 1377A, one on Bryte Bend Bridge(1-80), Sacramento, which is officially, the Caltrans Maintenance Worker Memorial Bridge, and the last on Miller Park, in Milwaukee, WI. (See presentation ( PDF), including a video of Miller Park).

ITI is co-sponsoring the Northwestern University special structural engineering seminar "Shear Behavior of High-Strength Concrete Bridge Girders" ( PDF), with guest speaker Dan Kuchma from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on March 1, 2005.

The Midwest Bridge Working Group held its Winter 2004 meeting on December 9, 2004 in Indianapolis, IN.

The Spring 2004 Midwest Bridge Working Group Meeting was held in Chicago, IL at the Holiday Inn Chicago City Centre on May 25 and 26, 2004.

ITI and Civil Data Systems staff members Dan Marron, Dave Kosnik, and Mat Kotowsky gave a presentation ( PDF) about the ITI-developed continuous remote bridge monitoring system, at the nCode / SoMat 2004 Midwest Users Conference held April 21 & 22 in Oak Brook, IL.

See Professor Kimberly Gray's fascinating talk about Sustainability: Engineering the City of the Future, a lecture she gave at Northwestern University on October 1, 2003. Topics presented through the video and lecture slides include:

What we mean by "sustainability" and the principles of sustainable development; examples of problems and possible solutions that would make future cities much more sustainable; a future plan (2050) for the City of San Diego, which won a national contest for Sustainable Development and was entered into a global competition.

Revive Wacker Drive: Wells Street Bridge / Wacker Project - Watch the amazing replacement of the Chicago Department of Transportation's Wells Street / Wacker Drive 'L' transit bridge that took place over one weekend in May, 2002 (streamed with permission from the Chicago Department of Transportation, ©2002).

The Midwest Bridge Working Group held their Winter 2003 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee on Wed., December 3, 2003.

ITI co-sponsored the symposium Structural Engineering: Future Trends, held on October 4, 2003 at Northwestern University. This event was held to recognize Professor Edwin C. Rossow for his contributions to teaching and research and to explore the future of Structural Engineering.

On March 17, 2003, the Institute hosted a seminar led by Mr. Philip E. Fish, retired bridge inspection engineer for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and nationally-recognized expert in the field of bridge inspection. He created and managed the State of Wisconsin's fracture critical bridge inspection program. At the seminar, Mr. Fish discussed the past, present and future of bridge inspection ( PDF), with emphasis on the use of nondestructive testing and evaluation.

The Institute-supported Midwest Bridge Working Group met December 5, 2002 in Evanston, Illinois. See the agenda and overview of the meeting.

The Acoustic Emission Working Group held its annual meeting at Northwestern from August 19 - 21, 2002. A one-day short course primer was offered on Monday, August 19, 2002 prior to the technical sessions. The primer, which included presentations by four outstanding leaders in the field of acoustic emission, was designed to bring newcomers to acoustic emission up to speed in preparation for the Working Group technical sessions. It covered the fundamentals of acoustic emission, instrumentation, materials and applications. Check out the online agenda ( PDF) for more information on the rest of the program.

ITI helped sponsor the symposium Geotechnical Materials: Measurement and Analysis at Northwestern University on August 3, 2002. The symposium honored Professor Raymond J. Krizek for his many contributions to teaching and research in geotechnical engineering. An electronic version of the proceedings is now available through the ITI website.

On June 27, 2002 the Institute sponsored a "walkaround" inspection of the disassembled former Montrose Avenue bridge overpass which connected the Chicago Transit Authority's North Side Elevated line to the Milwaukee Road freight line until it was removed in 1997. The structure, curently in on-the-ground storage at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois, was inspected by Mr. Phil Fish, retired bridge inspection engineer from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Mr. Fish offered commentary and responded to questions as he conducted the inspection.