Experimental, Numerical and Field Approaches to Scour Research

Yee-Meng Chiew,Oscar Link,Jihn-Sung Lai

doi:10.3390/w12061749

Yee-Meng Chiew, Oscar Link + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/w12061749

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Abstract

Scour, which represents a fascinating and complex engineering problem involving a number of physical mechanisms and interactions, has motivated a vast amount of research following different but complementary methodological approaches such as experimental, numerical, and field methods. Far from being completely understood, scour remains one of the main hazards for many structures such as bridges, submarine pipelines, offshore wind turbines, etc. Thus, scour is currently a very active field of research with important open questions that are unanswered and practical challenges to be tackled. This Special Issue aims to bridge knowledge gaps by collecting fourteen papers to provide a wide view of scour types and different research approaches, with innovative ideas and inferences.

Highlights

IntroductionScour, which represents an intriguing and complex engineering problem involving many physical mechanisms and interactions, has motivated a vast amount of research following different but complementary methodological approaches such as experimental, numerical, and field methods
Scour, which represents an intriguing and complex engineering problem involving many physical mechanisms and interactions, has motivated a vast amount of research following different but complementary methodological approaches such as experimental, numerical, and field methods.Notwithstanding the many research findings that can be found in published literature, the subject is far from being completely understood
Reservoirs that are caused by dam construction act to impound water in rivers, mainly for water supply and flow regulation, invariably modifying the channel bed slope. Their formation has a tendency to induce sediment deposition, which is a kind of negative scour [19,20], while a grade-control structure can have a profound influence on local scour [21]

Summary

Introduction

Scour, which represents an intriguing and complex engineering problem involving many physical mechanisms and interactions, has motivated a vast amount of research following different but complementary methodological approaches such as experimental, numerical, and field methods. Scour continues to be one of the main hazards for many structures such as bridges, submarine pipelines, offshore wind turbines, etc., as is shown in the catastrophic failure of Houfeng Bridge in September 2008 (Figure 1) and the serious scour problems downstream of the grade-control structure leading to the demise of Zhongzheng Bridge in July 2013 (Figure 2) This subject remains a very active area of research with important unanswered questions and practical challenges that need to be resolved. Despite the important works done in Europe on monopile scour, e.g., Whitehouse et al [1], the authors did not incorporate the effect of vibrations on scour Such limitations were highlighted in a recent review paper by Fredsøe [2], who lamented such a lack of consideration in past researches.

Failure of Bridge to pier-scour pier-scour in in September

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