Institute for Transportation

Bridge inspectors are assigned the difficult task of assessing the integrity and safe load-carrying capacity of our Nation‰Ûªs highway bridges. This task becomes even more challenging in the case of historic covered timber bridges. Most engineers are not adequately trained for inspecting timber structures and typically tend to be overly conservative in their assessments. When relying solely on visual inspection techniques, they don‰Ûªt always recognize the signature indicators of internal decay and/or deterioration in timber bridge components. Many advanced tools are available in the marketplace to supplement visual inspection data, but most require complicated data interpretation, which limits their use in routine bridge inspections.