EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BRIDGE PIER SCOUR PATTERN

Being an important component of a transportation system, bridge piers needs to be properly designed for scouring around its piers. For proper design of bridge piers, appropriate investigation of scouring patterns is extremely important for various sizes and shapes of such piers. Without having research based knowledge of such patterns, it becomes extremely difficult to predict/minimize the scouring effects ultimately leading to severe pier damages. In this research study, experimental investigation is carried out to find the scouring patterns in terms of scour depth and its extent in lateral direction for circular and square pier models. For this purpose a number of experiments were conducted in the physical modeling laboratory of River Engineering and drainage control, USM, Malaysia. The study shows that the pier scour depth and affected area around pier increase with the increase in pier size. The study further demonstrates that the square pier models results in greater scour depth and area as compared to circular pier models. Magnitudes of scour depths and area with reference to variation in shapes and sizes of piers are also presented in this paper, along with contour maps of scour depths, both on upstream and downstream sides.