HYDROLOGY AND WATER MANAGEMENT

FLUID MECHANICS LAB

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Contents of Presentation
❑Bridge pier scour
❑Bridge Scour Mechanism
❑Types of Bridge Scouring
❑Influence of soil cohesion on scour rate
❑Main Causes of Bridge Collapse
❑Bridge failure mechanism
❑Local pier scour processes
❑Estimation of Local Scour depth at Bridge Scour
❑Laboratory determination of Bridge Scour
❑How to avoid bridge scour
 Bridge Pier Scour
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the
United States defined scour as erosion or removal of
streambed/bank material from the bridge foundation,
owing to flowing water, categorizing it as long-term bed
degradation. It is the result of erosive actions of flowing
water that may expose the bridge foundation. Riverbed
scour may occur under a normal flow condition or a
flood event. The difference is that the flood accelerates
the scour process, and, during flood, there may be
continuous deposition of sediments in the scour hole.
Scour reaches its maximum near the peak flood, but it
weakens as the flood recedes.
Bridge Scour Mechanism
Types of Bridge Scouring
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The main causes of general scour that induce aggradation or degradation of the bed channel are
• Natural phenomena, such as channel straightening, climate changes and land activities (landslides,
mudflows)
• Human activities, such as land-use changes (deforestation, urbanization), dam and reservoir
construction, river bed material mining and channel alterations.
Local Scour - is induced by the
• local change of cross-section geometry due to the presence of the bridge (Graf, 1998; Richardson
and Davis, 2001). Local scour usually results from the joint effect of contraction scour, due to the
flow velocity increase associated with the reduction of channel section, and the pier and abutment
scour, due to the (local) alteration of the flow field induced by piers and abutments
Clear-Water and Live-Bed Scour
Local and contraction scour depend on the balance between streambed
erosion and sediment deposition. To this end two different scour
regimes have been defined, namely clear-water scour and live bed
scour (Graf, 1998; Melville and Chiew, 1999; Richardson and Davis,
2001). In the former case no sediments are delivered by the river or the
bed material is transported in suspension through the scour hole at less
than the capacity of the flow. In the latter case an interaction exists
between sediment transport and scour processes, due to bed material
being transported from the upstream reach into the crossing. Live-bed
scour shows a cyclic nature: the scour hole that develops during the
rising stage of a flood refills (totally or partially) during the falling
stage (Richardson and Davis, 2001). It follows that in live-bed
conditions the presence of sediments loads leads to smaller scour
depths than in clear-water conditions.
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In order to assess whether scour is clear water or live-bed, a motion criteria can be used (Melville and Coleman,
2000), with reference to the D50, mean diameter representative of the soil particle distribution. By comparing
the mean velocity upstream of the bridge, V, with the critical velocity, Vc, of the D50 bed material, scour
conditions will be
Influence of Soil Cohesion on Scour Rate

However, although maximum local scour depth around a bridge pier can be the same in cohesive soils as in non-
cohesive soils, timing is different (Richardson and Davis, 2001). The magnitude of local scour is significantly
influenced by the cohesion of the bed material (Ansari et al., 2002; Brandimarte et al., 2006a; Briaud et al.,
1999) that, because of the electromagnetic and electrostatic interparticle forces, increases the scour resistance.
The increased resistance offered by soil cohesion results in a slower scour pace: thus, a more realistic estimate of
time progression of the scour hole cannot neglect the effect of cohesion on local scour.
Main Causes of Bridge Collapse
According to a comprehensive collection of bridge failure data worldwide gathered by Imhof (2004), natural
hazard is the main cause of bridge collapse (Fig. 1) and among the natural hazard listed causes, flooding or scour
is responsible worldwide for around 60% of the collapses (Fig. 2)
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Indeed, by looking at the database collected by Imhof (2004), one can notice that the percentage of collapsed
bridge has increased in the past decades (Table 1): while collapses due to limited knowledge or design error
have decreased in time, those due to natural hazards have increased
Bridge Failure Mechanism
Water and sediments flowing through a bridge can cause damage and
in extreme situations failure of the bridge (or part of it) in a number of
ways (Melville and Coleman, 2000). The most common cause of pier
failure is due to pier scour that undermining piers and footings can
cause loss of support to the bridge deck. Piers and bridge deck can be
damaged by floating material, such as boulders being moved by the
flow, whose impact on bridge piers and deck can destabilize
supporting structures. Floating debris accumulating at bridge piers
can generate lateral and vertical forces on bridges and, at the same
time, can clog, partially or totally, the waterway.
Local Pier Scour Processes
The presence of a bridge structure in a flow channel inevitably involves a significant change to the flow pattern,
which in turns induces changes to the stream bed elevation. Flow changes due to bridge piers results in the
formation of a scour hole at the piers, which has been recognized by several studies (Melville and Coleman,
2000; Richardson and Davis, 2001) responsible for pier undermining and thus for pier damage or failure. The
dominant feature of the flow near a pier is the system of vortices that develops around the pier when
unidirectional flow in erodible channel becomes three-dimensional (Graf, 1998; Melville and Coleman, 2000;
Shen et al., 1969). Depending on bridge geometry and flow conditions, the system of vortices can be composed
by all, any or none of three individual basic systems acting at the pier (Fig. 6): a) the horse-vortex system at the
base of the pier; b) the wake-vortex system downstream of the pier; c) the surface roller ahead of the pier
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The dominant feature of the flow near a pier is the system of
vortices that develops around the pier when unidirectional flow in
erodible channel becomes three-dimensional (Graf, 1998; Melville
and Coleman, 2000; Shen et al., 1969). Depending on bridge
geometry and flow conditions, the system of vortices can be
composed by all, any or none of three individual basic systems
acting at the pier
• the horse-vortex system at the base of the pier
• the wake-vortex system downstream of the pier
• the surface roller ahead of the pier
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The horseshoe-vortex (Fig. 6) is due to the vertical component of a downward flow, namely from
high to low velocities, observed in front of the pier as a result of the stagnating pressure gradient, as
the flow approaches the pier (Raudkvi, 1991). Although the downward flow will be laterally
diverted by a pressure gradient around the pier, it is generally agreed upon that it is the vertical
component of the flow the one responsible for removing bed material (Graf, 1998). Due to the
stagnation pressure, the water surface, in upstream of the pier, increases resulting in a surface roller.
If the pressure field is sufficiently strong, it induces a three-dimensional separation of the boundary
layer and the horse-vortex system forms itself at the base of the pier (Graf, 1998; Shen et al., 1969).
The downward flow impinging on the bed acts like a vertical jet in eroding a groove immediately
adjacent to the front of the pier (Melville and Coleman, 2000). Contrary to the case of the horse
vortex system, the wake-vortex system is generated by the pier itself: it is due to the rolling up of
unstable shear layers at the surface of the pier (Shen et al., 1969). The wake vortices arise from
either side of the pier at the separation line and are transported downstream by the flow. Shen et al.
(1969) noticed that this vortex system is stable for low Reynolds numbers (3 to 5 <Re<40 to 50) and
form a standing system downstream of the pier; however, for Reynolds number of practical interests,
the wake vortices become unstable, are shed alternately from the pier and are translated
downstream. The wake-vortex system acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking up stream bed material
and transporting downstream of the pier the sediment moved by the downward flow and by the
horse-vortex system (Melville and Coleman, 2000). The intensity of the wake vortices decreases
rapidly as the distance downstream of the pier increases: this often results in sediment deposition
downstream of a long pier (Richardson and Davis, 2001)
 Estimation of Local Scour depth at Bridge Pier
❑Empirical methods
These empirical methods are mostly derived analyzing experimental data. Most of these formulations express the
final scour depth as a function of the flow characteristics (mean flow velocity at the approach section, water depth),
flow properties (mass density, and cinematic viscosity of the fluid), stream bed material properties (mean particle
diameter, mass density) and bridge geometry (shape and dimension of the pier, angle of attack of the flow).
• By fitting results obtained performing a series of laboratory experiments, in live-bed conditions, Laursen (1958)
proposed the following empirical derived formulation for estimating local scour at piers.

z y 0.5
= 1.11
b b
where: z(m) is the final scour depth
b is the pier dimension and y is the water depth.
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• Among formulations that apply in clear-water conditions, the one proposed by Shen et al. (1969) has been for
years the most used one
0.619
Vb
Z = 0.00022
υ
Being υ the cinematic viscosity of water and V the mean flow velocity, b is the pier dimension. This formulation
was one of the first empirically derived attempt to evaluate final scour depth at piers and most of the next
formulations that have been proposed in the literature in the following decades, have been derived from Shen’s
data
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• The equation by Hancu (1971) involves the dependence of scour depth from the critical velocity Vc , that
establishes the threshold condition for bed material being removed. In Eq. 5, g is the acceleration of gravity:

𝑉 𝑉𝑐 2 1
𝑍 = 2.42𝑑 2 −1 ( )3
𝑉𝑐 𝑔𝑏

• In 1988 Melville and Sutherland developed a model that evaluates scour depth by as a function of the pier
dimension and correction factors that account for flow characteristics and pier geometry.

𝑍 = 𝐾1 ∗ 𝐾𝑦 ∗ 𝐾𝑠 ∗ 𝐾𝑑 ∗ 𝐾δ ∗ 𝑏

where: KI, Ky and Kd are function of, respectively, the V/Vc ratio, the upstream flow depth-pier size ratio, the
sediment size; Ks and Kδ depend on the pier shape and the pier alignment.
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• Limitations of these Formulations

The application of these conservative formulations leads to an overestimation of the scour hole
(Melville and Coleman, 2000; Richardson and Davis, 2001). This implies an overestimation of bridge
foundations that results in an economic waste during bridge designing. As shown in Table 2, some of
these equations have the velocity as a variable, either as mean flow velocity or as Froude number; some
of them, however, are independent from flow velocity. As shown in the study by Jones, these
commonly used equations may provide, for the same case study, really different scour values, due to the
variability of parameters involved in these equations. This consideration should suggest bridge
engineers to carefully select the methods to perform, when evaluating bridge scour vulnerability,
according to the case study characteristics, in order to apply several different methods to be able to
critically compare scour depth values obtained by performing these equations.
Laboratory determination of Bridge Scour
Laboratory determination of Bridge Scour
How to avoid bridge scour
How to avoid bridge scour
THANKS