Abstract
Local scour of bridge piers is one of the main threats responsible for bridge damage. Adopting scour countermeasures to protect bridge foundations from scour has become an important issue for the design and maintenance of bridges located in erodible sediment beds. This paper focuses on the protective effect of one active countermeasure named an “anti-scour collar” on local scour around the commonly used cylindrical bridge pier. A cylindrical pier model was set up in a current flume. River sand with a median particle size of 0.324 mm was selected and used as the sediment in the basin. A live-bed scour experimental program was carried out to study the protective effect of an anti-scour collar by comparing the local scour at a cylindrical bridge pier model with and without collar. The effects of three design parameters including collar installation height, collar external diameter and collar protection range, on the scour depth and scour development were investigated parametrically. According to the experimental results, it can be concluded that: the application of an anti-scour collar alleviates the local scour at the pier effectively; and the protection effect decreases with an increase in the collar installation height, but increases with an increase in the collar external diameter and the protection range. Design suggestions for improving the scour protective effect of the anti-scour collar are summarized and of great practical guiding significance to the development of anti-scour collars for bridge piers.
Highlights
The local scour of bridge piers is one of the main natural causes to bridge structure damage [1,2].A survey conducted by the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 1973 showed that more than 20% of pier damage and 70% of abutment damage in a total number of 383 bridge accidents were caused by scour [3]
In order to eliminate the effect of geometry of the pier on the results [46], the dimensionless scour depth S/D measured at twelve measuring points under different scouring times are plotted in Figure 7a, respectively
Scour around single cylindrical piers and the effects of anti-scour collars were investigated by carrying out laboratory tests
Summary
The local scour of bridge piers is one of the main natural causes to bridge structure damage [1,2]. A survey conducted by the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 1973 showed that more than 20% of pier damage and 70% of abutment damage in a total number of 383 bridge accidents were caused by scour [3]. Wardhana and Hadipriono [4] studied over 500 instances of bridge damage that occurred between the year 1989 and 2000 in the United States and found that more than 50% of the bridge failures were caused by scour due to flood. Yi et al [6] reviewed 160 bridge collapse accidents that occurred from the year 2000 to 2014 in China and found that more than 30% of the bridge accidents were caused by scour. Scour can remove the sediment around the bridge foundation, change the structural natural frequencies, reduce the lateral bearing capacity of the foundation and even reduce the seismic capacity of the bridge [7,8,9,10,11]
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