Shear Strength of Keyed Joints in Segmental Precast Concrete Bridges

Abstract:

Based on the stress analysis of a free body with a multi-keyed joint at the web of segmental precast concrete bridge, the shear stress distribution on the root of multi-keys at the joint was analyzed and derived. According to the elastic theoretical analysis, a non-uniform factor of shear stress at the root of multi-keys was proposed and used to modify the AASHTO formula of shear strength of the joint with multi-keys. The comparison with the numerical analysis results shows that the modified formula can accurately reflect the change trend and peak effect of shear stress in multi-keys. Moreover, the differences between the calculation results of the proposed modified formula and the relevant test results are within 5%.

Key words:segmental precast concrete bridges; multi-keyed joints; non-uniform shear stress distribution; shear strength