Seismic Capacity Evaluation of Interior Shear Keys for Highway Bridges

Abstract

Interior shear keys commonly serve as structural fuses to control damage in substructures under seismic loads. To evaluate the seismic capacity of interior shear keys, six specimens with the main variables were tested. Three failure modes of the interior shear key specimens were observed during the tests. Moreover, different analytical models corresponding to the three failure modes and an empirical formula were developed to estimate the seismic capacity of the specimens. Compared with the experimental results, the improved methods provided a more accurate prediction of the load-carrying capacity than the classical analytical models.