Seismic study of an historic covered bridge

Abstract

The covered timber bridge has become an icon of the nation's bucolic nineteenth-century past. The public reveres these quaint structures without really understanding their historic significance, either as a visible sign of the internal improvements movement (a dominant theme in the early years of the Republic) nor of their pioneering role in the development of American truss bridges. One of these survivors is the (West Virginia) Barrackville Bridge, completed to the patented Burr arch-truss design in 1853 by West Virginia's pioneering covered bridge builder, Lemuel Chenoweth. As part of a comprehensive restoration program expected to be completed in 1998, this paper describes the expected static and seismic behavior of the restored bridge. These analyses were performed using current AASHTO, nineteenth-century loading conditions, for code specific and historic earthquakes. The results serve as a basis of the restoration design.