Abstract
The bridges are one of important structures in any country. The failure of bridges occurs due to many factors including design flaws and manufacturing construction errors. Among all imperfections scouring around the pier is the most detrimental. So, the estimation of local scouring around a bridge pier is of fundamental importance for the safe design of bridges. Although numerous researches have been done on local scouring around a single bridge pier. The present study investigates the effect of angle of inclination of dual bridge pier configuration on local scouring around bridge piers. Principally rectangular shaped dual bridge piers were installed in sand bed of laboratory flume at angle of inclination of 0°,7°,12°,15° and 19° with vertical respectively. Three different flow rates 9, 14 and 18L/sec were considered during each trial. The duration of each trial was kept around 2 hours. The scour depth was measured separately around both piers with the help of point gauge under clear water condition. The value of scour depth around upstream pier was larger as compared to downstream pier because of the lower strength of horseshoe vortices around downstream pier. From the experimental results, it can be concluded that there is an inverse relationship between the angle of inclination and scour depth, an increase in the angle of inclination leads to decrease in scour depth around both piers. The value of scour depth was maximum when piers were at 0° and minimum at 19°. It was also found that scour depth increases with the increase in flow rate.
Highlights
Scouring is a process in which removal of sediments such as sand and gravel occurs from abutments and piers of bridges
According to Briaud et al [2], more than 1000 bridge failure reported in the United States and 60% of these failures were due to local scouring
Basic purpose of this study was to investigate the local scouring around pair of inclined bridge piers and comparison between scouring pattern of both piers
Summary
Scouring is a process in which removal of sediments such as sand and gravel occurs from abutments and piers of bridges. Et al [1] stated that bridge piers and abutments existing across the river decrease the cross section of water flow. When the swiftly flowing water strike these piers and supports the streamlines of flowing water are diverted towards river bed floor and create horseshoe, swirling and rising vortices. These vortices are main cause of local scouring around bridge piers. Many researchers have studied the scouring process theoretically and experimentally using different shapes of piers and many parameters affecting this phenomenon. The scour rate was higher in early stage of experiment while it decreases with the passage of time and scour depth at upstream side of pier was larger as compared to downstream side
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