Development of empirical formulas for effect of circular pier and abutment on local scour depth

Abstract EN

This study based on laboratory experiments for computing depth of local scour around abutment and bridge pier neighboring abutment considering the study of the effects of upstream flow conditions, pier and abutment sizes, median size of bed material and spacing between pier and abutment on the maximum scour depth and scour pattern around a pier and abutment.

The study was conducted using a physical hydraulic model of pier and abutment operated under subcritical flow, clear-water condition and using uniform cohesionless sand as bed material.

Three different size models of pier and abutment were used to show the effect of the size on the local scour and two different median sizes (d50) of sand were used in this study.

Dimensional analysis techniques and statistical analysis were used to find new formulas with help of the experimental data.

One of these formulas was to compute the maximum scour depth at pier neighboring abutment and the other to find the maximum scour depth at abutment.

There formula were derived to predict the maximum scour depth in terms of Froude number, diameter of pier and abutment, median size of sand, flow depth, flow velocity and spacing between pier and abutment.