Cold-spray repair of corroded steel bridge girders via an optimization-driven cyber-physical workflow and robotic deposition architecture
Research output: Preprint/Documentation/Report › Preprint
Contributors
Abstract
Corrosion-induced material loss in steel bridge poses persistent persistent challenges for inspection, load rating, and rehabilitation, often leading to conservative decisions and labor-intensive repair strategies. This paper presents a cyber-physical workflow for optimized repair design and a robotic cold-spray deposition architecture targeting corroded steel bridge girders. The framework integrates laser scanning, corrosion mapping, nonlinear finite element analysis, and gradient-based optimization to generate material-efficient cold-spray repair geometries tailored to the as-is condition of deteriorated members. Three-dimensional point cloud data are processed into a structured thickness field that captures localized corrosion while remaining computationally efficient for iterative optimization. Using this representation, spatially varying cold-spray deposition thickness fields are determined to maximize load-carrying capacity recovery while minimizing added material. Both Pareto-based and penalty-based optimization formulations are explored, enabling efficiency-driven trade-off analysis or direct targeting of prescribed capacity levels. The computational framework is validated against full-scale experimental testing of a naturally corroded steel girder, demonstrating close agreement between predicted and measured structural response. To connect optimized repair design with execution, a robotic cold-spray deposition architecture and a dedicated slicing strategy are introduced, together with a virtual environment for simulating deposition kinematics and process constraints. The proposed workflow establishes an integrated, data-driven pathway toward automated, performance-informed cold-spray repair of steel bridge infrastructure.
Details
| Original language | English |
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| Publisher | Open Engineering Inc. |
| Publication status | Published - 29 Jan 2026 |
Publication series
| Series | engrXiv : engineering archive |
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No renderer: customAssociatesEventsRenderPortal,dk.atira.pure.api.shared.model.researchoutput.WorkingPaper
External IDs
| ORCID | /0000-0003-1370-064X/work/205333751 |
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Keywords
Keywords
- Cold spray, Additive manufacturing, Laser Scanning, Virtual twins, Finite Element Analysis