Queen post

A queen post is a tension member in a truss that can span longer openings than a king post truss. A king post uses one central supporting post, whereas the queen post truss uses two.^[1] Even though it is a tension member, rather than a compression member, they are commonly still called a post. A queen post is often confused with a queen strut, one of two compression members in roof framing which do not form a truss in the engineering sense.^[2]

Queen Post

Interior structure of a covered bridge that uses a queen-post structure
Ancestor	Truss bridge
Related	None
Descendant	None
Carries	Pedestrians, livestock, vehicles
Span range	short to medium
Material	wood planks
Movable	No
Design effort	medium
Falsework required	Sometimes

The double punch truss appeared in Central Europe during the Renaissance.^[3]

Architecture

The queen posts are the second and third (from left) vertical posts visible in the photo, visibly thicker than the other posts.

A queen-post bridge has two uprights, placed about one-third of the way from each end of the truss. They are connected across the top by a beam and use a diagonal brace between the outer edges. The central square between the two verticals is either unbraced (on shorter spans), or has one or two diagonal braces for rigidity. A single diagonal reaches between opposite corners; two diagonal braces may either reach from the bottom of each upright post to the center of the upper beam, or form a corner-to-corner "X" inside the square.^[4]

See also

• Timber roof trusses
• Timber framing