In view of the fact that there is no shear design method for the contact surface of piled wharves prefabricated joint in China’s current code of concrete structure for water transportation engineering,the recommended design methods of American standard ACI318,European standard en1992-1-1,Japanese prefabricated building code and China’s civil code Technical Specification for Precast Concrete Structure are compared and studied.Based on the failure mechanism,the main factors affecting the shear capacity of the fabricated joints are summarized:the roughness of the contact surface,the groove action of the end face,and the pin action of the longitudinal reinforcement.Finally,through the typical design example,the shear capacities of the vertical contact surface of the prefabricated joint for different cods are compared.The Japanese prefabricated building code is recommended for the groove design of the contact surface required.