Numerical investigation on early age performance of ultra-high-performance concrete shear keys between an adjacent prestressed concrete box beams

Abstract

Adjacent precast prestressed concrete box beam bridges have been widely utilized for decades and have shown satisfactory performance. However, significant issues regarding to the longitudinal shear key cracking have been noted by bridge maintenance personnel. The cracks are typically initiated at beam-shear key interfaces due to shrinkage and temperature and propagate due to applied load. Recently, ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) was employed in the shear keys with the anticipation to prevent joint cracking. Although the field-collected data at early age from bridge utilizing UHPC shear keys indicated promising performance, the results only reflected the early age joint behavior at locations which were instrumented during the field test. In the current study, a 3D finite element (FE) model was developed to calculate the early age stresses due to shrinkage and temperature. The results indicated that the UHPC material associated with a specific shear key configuration created a “self-locked” phenomenon that generated compression on the upper level shear key. The early age tensile stress during the first couple of days near the end of the joint was relatively small compared to the tensile strength of UHPC material. Although the interface had sufficient capacity to resist the early age stresses, it is still a critical component and needs to be designed with sufficient capacity.