Temporal Variation of Scour around Circular Compound Piers

Abstract

Bridge piers having a nonuniform cross section over their height are termed as compound bridge piers. Mostly circular piers resting on large diameter wells or caissons (termed here as a circular compound bridge pier) are adopted for use in the Indian subcontinent for the road and railway bridges. In the present study, a new mathematical model is proposed for computation of temporal variation of scour depth at circular compound bridge piers. Two series of laboratory experiments were conducted to collect data for model application. In the first series of experiments, the data on temporal variation of scour depth were collected, albeit up to the transient (developing) stage of scour, around the circular uniform piers and circular compound piers for the clear-water scour condition. The second series of experiments was carried out to measure the size and hence the area of the principal vortex of the horseshoe vortex system and to determine the bed shear stress at the upstream face of the scour hole around the circular uniform piers and the circular compound piers. The mathematical model proposed in this paper has the capability to compute the temporal variation of scour depth around circular compound piers for all possible cases of footing position with respect to bed level, i.e., footing above the bed level, footing at the bed level, and footing below the bed level.