Field investigations of historic covered timber bridges in the USA

Abstract

The Federal Highway Administration is sponsoring a comprehensive research program on Historic Covered Timber Bridges in the USA. This national program's main purpose is to develop improved methods to preserve, rehabililate, and restore the timber bridge trusses that were developed during the early 1800s, and in many cases are still in service today. The overall goal of the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program is to preserve thes iconic bridge structures for future generations. One of the many ongoing studies is aimed at establishing a procedure for safely and reliably load-rating historic covered bridges though physical testing. This paper will provide an overview of the field testing methods, results, and finite element modeling procedures and briefly discuss the load rating procedures to be developed based on the testing results.

Citation

Wacker, James; Hosteng, Travis; Phares, Brent. 2012. Field investigations of historic covered timber bridges in the USA. In: WCTE Auckland new Zealand, 15-19 July 2012, World Conference on Timber Engineering; pp. 346-355, 2012.