Effect of Debris on the Local Scour at Bridge Piers

Abstract

Scour is one of the most recurrent causes of failure of bridge structures in alluvial rivers. There is a variety of formulas for the assessment of bridge scour characteristics and for the design of suitable protection. Nevertheless, current approaches neglect the effect of debris carried by natural streams during floods, even when the accumulation of debris can extremely amplify the action of scouring processes. Until now, very limited efforts have been conducted to systematically investigate these effects. The present study focuses on the effect of debris on the maximum clear-water scour depth at cylindrical piers inserted in uniform, fully-developed turbulent flows in wide rectangular channels with flatbed composed of uniform, non-ripple forming sand. For these purposes, an experimental campaign was carried out by performing 17 long-duration (td = 7 days) experiments. The experimental tests were performed in the hydraulic structures channel at the University of Beira Interior. The channel was 0.83 m wide, 12.0 m long and 1.0 m deep. In the central reach of the flume, a 3.0 m long and 0.30 m deep recess exists where scour is free to develop. The experiments were carried out with a cylindrical pier with 0.05 m diameter and two boxes, each with debris of different dimensions, either of triangular or rectangular shape. The tests were carried out with constant approach flow depth, d = 0.15 m, and average approach flow velocity, U, approximately equal to the average approach flow velocity for the threshold condition of sediment entrainment, Uc ~ 0.31 m/s. For this velocity, the scour depth can be expected to be maximal. The experiments will give a special focus to the development of scour hole as the accumulated debris increase. Moreover, the experimental results will be compared with a reference experimental run without debris, so that the increments on scour depth due to the single debris clusters of different characteristics will be obtained and discussed. The following conclusions were obtained: i) The shape and position of the debris accumulation have a strong influence on the final scour depth. Debris placed on the bottom, upstream of the bridge pier, with a triangular shape, does not induce any increase in scour depths, the values are practically the same as the one obtained for the reference pier (without debris); ii) The method suggested by [3], as modified by [6], performed well, replicating the main trends observed in the experiments; and the influence of the relative submerged ratio of the debris on the scour depth, followed the trend observed previously by [8], with an increasing scour depth up to a critical value of the ratio, and then decreasing scour for ratios higher than this critical value.