Minimizing of Scour around Bridge Piers: An Application to Cylindrical Piers

Bridges are one of the hydraulic structures, which constructed across open channels and are usually laid on some kind of supports that obstructs the channel flow. One of the most important considerations in the design and construction of the bridges is the scour around its foundation. Many of the bridge failures from flow, can be attributed directly to scour or undermining of the piers. In this study a new method was proposed to minimize the scour depth around bridge piers. The method depends on reducing the flow stagnation in the front face of the pier using an opening on the front of the pier connected through the pier to two openings at the pier sides. The flow passes through these openings using pressure difference around the pier sides. This pressure difference attracts the flow to pass from the front opening to the side openings through the tube system connecting the openings this helps releasing the stagnation of the flow in the front of the pier as well as reducing the downward flow velocity component. A series of laboratory experiments were conducted in order to investigate the efficiency of the proposed method on minimizing of scour depth around a circular cylinder.