Historic Wooden Covered Bridge Trusses in Germany

For the past five years Germany's historic wooden covered bridges have been the subject of a rudimentary documentation undertaken by Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany which has culminated in a complete inventory of the known bridges still remaining. For the engineer and construction historian it is not just their age, heritage value and romantic settings that make them interesting, but the construction problem given and the technical solution employed. The problem is to free-span distances that exceed the intrinsic physical capabilities or economic viability of the building material, in this case wood. The solution was the clever use of assembling small components into a larger load-bearing frame or truss. The paper will summarise the current state of the inventory and present examples of the different truss-solutions found.