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The future of bridge repair may look less like beams and welding and more like high-tech spray paint. Work led by Simos Gerasimidis, associate professor in the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, has recently been awarded a 2026 IDEAS Award by the American Institute of Steel Construction, the highest design honor in the structural steel industry, for applying a 3D printing technique called cold spray to restore corroded steel beams on bridges.

“We are sincerely grateful to the American Institute of Steel Construction for this recognition and for their leadership in elevating bold, forward-looking ideas within the steel community,” said Gerasimidis. “This award reinforces the importance of investing in research that bridges fundamental mechanics, advanced manufacturing and real-world infrastructure needs.”

Cold spray is an additive manufacturing technique (often called 3D printing) that involves spraying high-velocity metal powder particles to coat sections of a steel beam. Repeated sprays create multiple layers, restoring thickness and other structural properties to the treated area.
 

Traditional bridge repair requires extensive welding, cutting, or complete beam replacement. This is costly and requires traffic diversions, sometimes for extended periods of time. Cold spray, however, could reduce the cost of repairs while minimizing traffic disruptions, since cars can continue to use bridges during repairs. 

While this method has been used on large structures like submarines, airplanes and ships, it had never been used on something immobile. In the summer of 2025, Gerasimidis and Chengbo Ai, also a UMass Amherst associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, along with collaborators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech), the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, were the first to apply this technique to a bridge—the red bridge (formerly known as the “Brown Bridge” in Great Barrington.

“This project demonstrated that cold spray additive manufacturing can move beyond the lab and into the field as a viable, rapid and structurally meaningful repair strategy for steel bridges,” says Gerasimidis. “More broadly, it represents a shift in how we think about localized steel repair: digitally informed, minimally disruptive and deployable at infrastructure scale.”

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The American Institute of Steel Construction is a not-for-profit structural steel technical institute with the goal of developing safe and efficient steel specifications and codes while driving innovation to make steel the most sustainable, economic and resilient structural material on the market.

The IDEAS Award typically recognizes innovative structures, but Gerasimidis’s team was awarded the inaugural “IDEAS | next Award” as an idea that could change the future.

“Field deployment of cold spray additive manufacturing redefines steel preservation and restoration,” commented Melissa Gradecki, AISC senior engineer of innovation and 2026 IDEAS Awards judge, in the organization’s announcement of the awards. “This innovation not only provides a structurally efficient and sustainable alternative to conventional repairs but has the potential to open the doors to other game-changing applications for any localized member restoration, including lintel and crack repair, on-site modification of small details, or rapid repairs in access-limited conditions. This innovation embodies the ‘IDEAS | next’ vision: bold, transformative and beneficial to diverse structural steel applications.”

Recently, Gerasimidis and Ai have also received awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Institute of Applied Life Sciences at UMass Amherst.