Effect of densimetric Froude number on local bridge pier scour

Williams, P. and Balachandar, R. and Bolisetti, T. (2016) Effect of densimetric Froude number on local bridge pier scour. In: ICSE 2016 (8th International Conference on Scour and Erosion), 12-15 September 2016, Oxford, UK.

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Abstract

Over the past half-century, distress and collapse due to scour and scour-related complications have been shown to account for the majority of bridge failures in North America. Accordingly, there are several design standards which contain provisions for design of bridge piers with respect to scour on the basis of several design equations. These empirical equations have shown a tendency towards over-prediction of scour depth, which yields uneconomical design. Over the past several years, there have been a number of experimental investigations into local scour around bridge piers carried out at the University of Windsor with the intention of improving current scour depth estimation practices. While there is a large amount of scour modelling data publically available, there are many uncertainties regarding the conditions under which these tests were performed; hence, results of the present investigation were obtained under controllable conditions in order to isolate the effects of various non-dimensional quantities and attempt to quantify their individual and collective influences on scour depth and geometry. The focus of the majority of these investigations has been on determining effects of blockage ratio, flow shallowness (h/D), and relative coarseness (D/d50) on maximum scour depth. Preliminary analysis indicated that D/d50 is of great importance in scour modelling, but variation in results indicated additional contributing parameters. Analysis of experimental results obtained indicated that an additional sediment-related non-dimensional parameter, the densimetric Froude number (Fd), also contributed to scour geometry.

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