Vertical Rotation Technique for Smart Yard-Based Accelerated Bridge Construction in Cities—A Preliminary Numerical Evaluation of Steel Shoes

Fully prefabricated bridge construction technology has gradually replaced traditional cast-in-place methods, becoming a core approach for efficient, environmental, and intelligent construction of bridges in cities. However, due to city-embedded restrictions, i.e., large width for more lanes, prefabricated cap beams in municipal bridges often demand segmental prefabrication and multi-point lifting, which hinders the overall construction efficiency. Based on a real project, this paper proposes a vertical rotation construction method for the bridge substructure, achieving integrated vertical rotation and positioning of prefabricated cap beams and piers by designing rotating steel shoes at the bottom of piers. This approach avoids segmental lifting of extraordinarily heavy cap beams while eliminating the need for prestressing and grouting operations high above the ground. Subsequently, detailed finite element models for critical rotational components, such as steel shoe, hinge pin and lug plates, are established to verify the stress distribution under various rotation conditions. The results demonstrate that the proposed layout, consisting of four 60 mm diameters 40Cr steel hinge pins with Q345 steel shoe and lug plates, effectively controls the representative stress within yield under all conditions, leaving the 10° scenario most unfavorable. Compared with the 10° rotation scenarios, increasing the initial rotation angle to 20° reduces the most critical stress inside the steel shoes by up to 39%, while further increasing to 30° only produces an additional 1% stress reduction. The design parameters of auxiliary equipment for the vertical rotation process can provide valuable references for future engineering practices.