Looking through to north
Looking over to Renville County side. Redwood County road 17 turns into Renville County road 21 at bridge.
Photo taken by David Erickson in November 2008
BH Photo #127314
Joe, I think it's pretty cool that we (the Bridgehunter.com community) have a bridge inspector contributing! Thanks for your post and updates.
I would be mighty interested in details of the inspection process, techniques, and other technical information about bridge inspections.
Inspected this bridge 8/20/14. The superstructure NBI rating has been upgraded from 3 to 4 (Poor Condition). Previously, one of the pins in the lower chord was showing a crack under ultrasonic testing. This pin has been replaced, resulting in a higher rating and an increase in the load posting to 10 tons.
After closer observation, it appears that this is the County Rd. 17 bridge over the Minnesota River, as the superstructures and the lattice handrails in both sets of photos are identical. Both sets of photos also show the bridge resting on concrete-filled cylindrical steel caissons.
I believe these pictures were posted in error--the current Harvest Avenue bridge is a conventional steel stringer bridge that has been in place since 1966.
My group inspects fracture-critical bridges across the state. Most of the inspection is visual; we are required to get within "arms reach" of all critical components. We can also use magnetic-particle and ultrasonic testing to look for cracks, section loss and other problems. We measure bearing movement, gusset plate bowing and substructure movement or tipping.
One of the people in my group put together a presentation about fracture-critical bridge inspection a few years ago. It can be found here:
http://4nsi.com/assets/files/Bill-Nelson-Bridge-Inspection.p...