Experimental Study on the Shear Performance of Shallow Hinge Joints for Prefabricated Hollow Slab Bridges

To investigate whether shallow hinge joint fracture was caused by shear stress or flexural stress, during the demolition and reconstruction of Xiaojiang River bridge, two original girders were collected and shipped to the lab, and the shallow hinge joint between the two girders was rebuilt. Tests were performed to investigate the cracking load, failure mode, and force transmission performance of the hollow slab girder and shallow hinge joint under vehicle load. The test result shows that under eccentric load, when the load increases to 365 kN, the midspan bottom slab of the testing girder starts to fracture; as the load increases to 560 kN, the roof slab of the testing girder starts to fracture; the hinge joint has a maximum horizontal opening of 0.153 mm and vertical relative displacement of 0.201 mm; during the entire test loading process, the shallow hinge joint structure does not develop fracture and shear failure; and the shallow hinge structure demonstrates excellent shear stress transmission performance. In addition, based on hinge slab theory, the hinge joint internal force under vehicle load was calculated. Based on ACI 318-05 specification, CAN/CSA-S6-00, and JTG D61-2005, the hinge joint shear bearing capacity was calculated. Hinge joint stress resistances calculated from the three specifications all exceed the internal force. Among them, the calculation results from ACI 318-05 and CAN/CSA-S6-00 are similar, while the result from JTG D61-2005 specification significantly exceeds the internal force, which is mainly because the designed concrete direct shear strength fvd in the Chinese specification does not consider factors such as bonding surface coarseness, concrete pouring sequence, and material properties. Theoretical calculations and tests show that the actual failure mode of the shallow hinge joint in prefabricated hollow slab girder bridges is not caused by shear stress.