Mutual interference of bridge piers placed in staggered arrangement on scour depth

The work reported herein is concerned with a carefully controlled extensive experimental study of local scour around a group of bridge piers placed in staggered arrangement with constant angle of attack and varying radial pier spacing in uniform sediment at varied pier spacing under steady uniform flow clear water scour conditions at flow intensity equal to 0.95. The objective of present study is to investigate the effect of mutual interference of bridge piers placed in staggered arrangement on the scour depth. Present study reveals that the piers placed in staggered arrangement at close proximity have considerable mutual interference effect on scour depth. It is found that the downstream pier should be placed at radial pier spacing greater than six times the pier diameter since the effect of vortex shedding produced by front pier on rear pier is reasonably less.