Abstract
Sacrificial shear keys in small-to-medium-span highway bridges mainly provide lateral support to the bridge superstructure under extreme events such as earthquake and/or tsunami. However, such support could lead to irreparable harm to important bridge elements like abutments and bent caps (base), delaying the functional recovery of bridges in the aftermath. In addition, existing designs of the shear key primarily emphasize resistant capacity but overlook resilience. This study introduces a new sliding, modular, adaptive, replaceable, and two-dimensional (SMART) shear key designed to enhance the resilience of I-girder highway bridges. The SMART shear key has three primary goals: 1) enabling the rapid replacement of failed shear key units, 2) mitigating irreparable damage to the critical base and 3) providing sufficient lateral resistance and adaptability. To achieve these goals, a test program is implemented as a Proof of Concept (PoC) including the fabrication of six full-scale SMART shear key specimens, a base for shear key installation, and quasi-static loading. The six specimens are loaded consecutively on the same base. Experimental results indicate that on average it takes approximately 20 minutes to replace a failed SMART shear key, while the base sustains only facial and cosmetic damage after six loading cycles. The lateral resistance forces of SMART shear keys vary from 249 to 470 kN, with sliding distances from 65 to 95 mm, which are comparable to the code-compliant conventional shear keys. An analytical formula is also derived and validated based on the test results to estimate the maximal capacity of SMART shear keys. Finally, future work is outlined to improve the performance of SMART shear keys.
Recommended Citation
X. Yuan et al., "Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Novel Resilient SMART Shear Keys for Speedy Functional Recovery of Highway Bridges After Extreme Events," Engineering Structures, vol. 338, article no. 120576, Elsevier, Sep 2025.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2025.120576
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Publication Status
Full Text Access
Keywords and Phrases
Analytical model; Bridge resilience; Experimental test; Extreme events; Horizontal resistance; SMART shear key
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
1873-7323; 0141-0296
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Elsevier, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Sep 2025
Comments
U.S. Department of Transportation, Grant 00059709