Quantitative safety evaluation of ancient Chinese timber arch lounge bridges

The timber arch lounge bridge is a special type of Chinese architectural heritage that is widely distributed in the southern Zhejiang Province and the northern Fujian Province. The precondition of planning the preventive conservation of built cultural heritage is the reliable evaluation of the structure safety, which enables the planners or decision-makers to comprehensively understand the complex damaged situation of the bridge and figure out a grading system for the bridge safety state. This paper puts forward a universal safety evaluation method for ancient Chinese timber arch lounge bridges. Special stress is given to the weight assignments during the procedure. Moreover, following the proposed evaluation method a case study of Wenxing Bridge is conducted, which could give a better insight into the evaluating process. This study contributes to a step forward, from the qualitative cognition to the quantitative assessment, on the way of evaluating the structure safety condition of ancient Chinese timber arch lounge bridges.