Steel-reinforced elastomeric bearing pads are widely used in bridge construction to vertically support girders on piers while also accommodating translational and rotational girder deformations caused by live loads and temperature changes. To support sloped girders, flat bearing pads of uniform thicknesses are typically used with either tapered steel shim plates or an inclined concrete bearing seat. The use of tapered pads has the potential to reduce both construction time and cost by eliminating the need for tapered plates or seats to match the girder slope. However, limited research has been performed to investigate the effect of introducing taper on relevant design properties of bearing pads. In this paper, results are presented from experimental testing that was performed to quantify the effect of taper on shear stiffnesses of pads having varied geometric characteristics (plan view dimensions, elastomer thicknesses, and slope angles). An experimental bearing pad test device was designed and utilized to impose shear loads in accordance with ASTM standards, while simultaneously maintaining a constant axial load. Bearing pads chosen for testing were tapered variations of standard flat bridge bearing pads used in the state of Florida, U.S. Results obtained from the study revealed that shear stiffness was not significantly influenced by the introduction of taper angle, the direction of shear along the length of pads, or axial load level. The shear stiffness of tapered pads remained within approximately 10% of the shear stiffness of corresponding flat pads.

钢增强的弹性承重垫广泛用于桥梁结构中，以在墩上垂直支撑大梁，同时还可以承受由于活荷载和温度变化而引起的平移和旋转大梁变形。为了支撑倾斜的大梁，通常将厚度均匀的扁平轴承垫与锥形钢垫片或倾斜的混凝土轴承座配合使用。锥形垫的使用有可能通过消除对锥形板或座来匹配梁斜率的需要而减少建造时间和成本。然而，进行有限的研究来研究引入锥度对轴承瓦块的相关设计性能的影响。在本文中，结果来自实验测试，该实验旨在量化锥度对具有各种几何特征（平面图尺寸，弹性体厚度和倾斜角度）的垫板的剪切刚度的影响。设计了一种实验性轴承垫测试装置，并根据ASTM标准利用该装置施加了剪切载荷，同时保持了恒定的轴向载荷。选择用于测试的轴瓦是美国佛罗里达州使用的标准平桥轴瓦的锥形变化。研究结果表明，锥角的引入并不会影响剪切刚度，锥角是沿长度方向的剪切方向。轴瓦或轴向载荷水平。