Engineering Commons^™

Chloride Contamination Remediation On Steel Bridges, Bobby W. Meade, Christopher Goff, Sudhir Palle, Theodore Hopwood Ii

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Researchers evaluated 32 steel surface preparation methods to determine how effectively they remove chloride from corroded chloride-contaminated steel panels. Wet methods proved more effective than dry methods. The three most effective wet methods injected mineral slag abrasives in a water stream and resulted in less than 1% chlorides remaining. Most dry surface preparation methods left significantly more chloride contamination after surface preparation. The three most effective dry methods used multiple blast cleaning cycles. These methods approached the effectiveness of the best wet methods, with 1.6 to 2.0% chlorides remaining. The least effective surface preparation was a single abrasive blast cleaning …

Evaluation Of The Use Of Painted And Unpainted Weathering Steel On Bridges, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Sudhir Palle, Bobby W. Meade, Rick Younce

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

KTC researchers studied the use of unpainted weathering steel on bridges, using findings of inspections performed on Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) bridges constructed with both painted and unpainted weathering steel as well as laboratory testing. Laboratory tests were conducted on test panels of conventional and weathering grades of steel to determine the performance of barrier and zinc-based coatings over abrasive-blasted substrates of those steel types in both the new and corroded conditions. The report provides the following recommendations for the use of painted and unpainted weathering steel on Kentucky bridges based upon both the field and laboratory findings:

• KYTC should …