Far East District (FED) structural engineers Choe, Hyon-Ku and Young C. Jung joined nine members of the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) during the week of Oct. 7 to perform bridge inspections on all U.S. military installations in the Republic of Korea. The team provided assessments on 57 bridges, both vehicular and pedestrian, and provided an out brief to garrison commanders in the region.
The results were 23 in good, 30 in fair, 13 in poor and one in critical condition.
“Poor condition is advanced deterioration and possible failure condition. Critical condition maintains that the structure needs to be closed due to possible failures,” said Young C. Jung, FED structural engineer.
Military regulations state that bridge inspections should take every two years. Some of the deficiencies that the team looked for included cracks in the road, excess vegetation hindering the roadway and whether signs were posted explaining the civilian weight restrictions on each bridge. Both FED structural engineers worked closely with the team from ERDC to complete the mission in a timely and efficient manner.
“Both became an integral part of the ERDC team,” said Gerardo Velazquez, ERDC research civil engineer, and bridge inspection team member.
“From helping collect channel profile data, identification of defects in concrete and classification between structural defects vs non-structural defects like concrete honeycomb and freeze-thaw cracking, they did an excellent job explaining to the technicians on the team what was a primary vs. secondary issue and what were the most important ones. Both got integrated to our teams very well and helped a lot,” said Velazquez.
Once the deficiencies were defined to the garrison commanders it will be up each commander to make the necessary repairs on each installation.