Experimental study: Bridge pier protection against local scour using guide panels

Abstract

The most important cause of failure in hydraulic structures is local scour. Local scour around a bridge pier is generally the result of the actions of a complex vortices system that appears due to the modification of flow patterns caused by obstructions associated with the bridge pier. Experimental studies have always been considered to be a powerful tool for understanding and analysing the performance of these complicated flow conditions, and for examining the effect of countermeasures which otherwise could not be subjected to theoretical analysis. This study was thus conducted to determine the efficiency of the proposed method of reducing the depth of scour under laboratory conditions. This was done by conducting scour studies for a pier protected by a guide panels of various heights under different hydraulic conditions suffering from clear water scour. The results showed that as the height of panels decreased, the scour depth also decreased, with a maximum reduction of scour depth equal to 93%, with negligible side effects on the guide panels' scour. Dimensional analysis was used, and based on the laboratory results, an empirical formula was derived using IBM SPSS v.24 with a coefficient of determination R 2 = 0.967; this indicates considerable convergence between predicated and observed data.