Princeton Junction, NJ – October 2008 – MISTRAS Group, Inc. has teamed up with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) in their effort to improve state and local bridges by highlighting their strategy at three press conferences in Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland.
Select steel bridges throughout Ohio will have critical gusset plate condition testing done with the Pocket UT, the world’s first hand-held, battery powered C-scan imaging system.

The Pocket UT, when accompanied by an R-scan, uses ultrasonic testing techniques to gather thickness data faster and display a graphical image to show areas of corrosion. The system runs on Windows CE and Pocket UTWin for data acquisition, analysis, and archiving and has the capability to perform A, B, and C-scan imaging. The data, retrieved by the two-pound unit, is stored on a 1GHz compact flash card that can be easily transferred to a laptop computer.

Home to more than 42,000 bridges, Ohio requires more inspections on bridges than any other state. Trained bridge inspectors currently use conventional thickness gages to take spot readings of aging and deterioration of key areas like gusset plates in steel bridges.

With the addition of the Pocket UT to ODOT’s bridge inspection and preservation program, inspectors will be able to pinpoint divots and section loss in a fraction of the time unlike a typical gage used in bridge inspection. This information is stored on the device as a permanent record for future reference and readings.

“The Pocket UT is a huge time saver, because not only will it limit the amount of time we have to inconvenience the public with the shutting down of bridges, but it allows us to receive better data, faster,” said Michael Loeffler, an inspector for the Ohio DOT. “Also, the less time our inspectors have to spend on a bridge is a safety factor that cannot be measured. It’s a win-win situation.”