• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.145-164
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• 2015

Bridge scour is the predominant cause of overwater bridge failures in North America and around the world. Several sensing systems have been developed over the years to detect the extent of scour so that preventative actions can be performed in a timely manner. These sensing systems have drawbacks, such as signal inaccuracy and discontinuity, installation difficulty, and high cost. Therefore, attempts to develop more efficient monitoring schemes continue. In this study, the viability of using optical dissolved oxygen (DO) probes for monitoring scour depths was explored. DO levels are very low in streambed sediments, as compared to the standard level of oxygen in flowing water. Therefore, scour depths can be determined by installing sensors to monitor DO levels at various depths along the buried length of a bridge pier or abutment. The measured DO is negligible when a sensor is buried but would increase significantly once scour occurs and exposes the sensor to flowing water. A set of experiments was conducted in which four dissolved oxygen probes were embedded at different soil depths in the vicinity of a mock bridge pier inside a laboratory flume simulating scour conditions. The results confirmed that DO levels jumped drastically when sensors became exposed during scour hole evolution, thereby providing discrete measurements of the maximum scour depth. Moreover, the DO probes could detect any subsequent refilling of the scour hole through the deposition of sediments. The effect of soil permeability on the sensing response time was also investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.38-47
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• 2009

Scour means the erosion of bed material by flow change when a bridge is constructed in a stream. Scour is one of the critical factors of a bridge failure. There are several methods for the monitoring of scour near bridge foundations; Sounding rods, Magnetic sliding collar System, Sonar system, underwater camera system and so on. In general, Sonar system is preferred due to its convenience and good accuracy. In this study, the new scour monitoring system was developed using profiling sonar sensor. The new system can measure a line profile of a seabed and has small size due to the effectively designed data logger. The performance of the new scour monitoring system was evaluated at a bridge pier in tidal environment. The measured local scour depths were discussed with the result of the empirical formulas; CSU, Froehlich, Laursen and Neill.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.2B
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• pp.187-195
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• 2006

A bridge scour management system is developed to evaluate the vulnerability of bridge piers to scour and to help establish effective disaster measures, taking into account the locality and scour characteristics in Korea. This system is programmed using the techniques of the geographical information system(GIS) for the storage, retrieval, and display of information regarding to bridge scour. The system functions are basically divided into two parts; prioritization and maintenance. Bridges are initially screened and prioritized for bridge scour inspection and evaluation using the basic information which is obtained from the office review. The bridge scour evaluation including site investigation is performed and the vulnerability of bridge piers is categorized into six groups taking into account the local scour depth, foundation bearing capacity, foundation type, foundation depth, and present scour condition. The system tabulates and plots all the data and the results.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.2B
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• pp.197-208
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• 2006

Case studies for real bridge sites are performed to verify the applicability of the Bridge Scour Management System in the field. The case studies for 20 bridges in Gangneung District of National Road Management consist of site investigations including the boring tests, bridge scour analyses for the design floods, bearing capacity evaluation of the bridge foundation before and after scour, and comprehensive evaluation of the bridge scour maintenance. The bridge scour management system is verified as an useful tool which can evaluate bridge scour vulnerability quantitatively, and is also proposed as a reasonable system which can help establish effective measures and secure the safety of bridges during floods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.71-80
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• 2005

More than 100 bridges have been annually collapsed or seriously damaged by scouring in Korea. It is extremely hard to understand the complicated scour mechanism and estimate the scour depth with accuracy in fields, however since scouring is a very complex manifestation of sediment transport unable to describe with a simple mathematical tool. In order to obtain the reasonable solution to bridge scouring, therefore, the interdisciplinary co-operation is strongly recommended. In this study the special task force team for the scour problems around Incheon 2nd bridge piers is made, in which all kinds of scour oriented researches such as oceangraphic survey, hydraulic model test, numerical simulation, scour rate test, real-time scour monitoring, etc will be carried out. This paper provides this interdisciplinary procedure in details.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.166-173
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• 2002

Seismic bridge failure due to the combined effects of earthquake and local scour are examined in probabilistic perspectives. The seismic responses of multi-span continuous bridge with deep foundations are evaluated with a simplified mechanical model. The probabilistic local scour depths around the deep foundations are estimated by using the Monte Carlo simulation. From the simulation results, it is found that seismic responses of a bridge slightly increase due to the local scour effect. The effect of local scour on the global motion of the continuous bridge is found to be significant under weak seismic intensity. In addition, the duration to regain its original foundation stiffness is critical in estimating the probability of foundation failure under earthquake. Therefore, the duration in recovering the foundation stiffness should be determined reasonably and the safely of the whole bridge system should be evaluated by considering the scour effect.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.183-195
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• 2014

Scour is one of the leading causes of overwater bridge failures worldwide. While monitoring systems have already been implemented or are still being developed, they suffer from limitations such as high costs, inaccuracies, and low reliability, among others. Also, most sensors only measure scour depth at one location and near the pier. Thus, the objective is to design a simple, low cost, scour hole topography monitoring system that could better characterize the entire depth, shape, and size of bridge scour holes. The design is based on burying a robust, waterproofed, piezoelectric sensor strip in the streambed. When scour erodes sediments to expose the sensor, flowing water excites it to cause the generation of time-varying voltage signals. An algorithm then takes the time-domain data and maps it to the frequency-domain for identifying the sensor's resonant frequency, which is used for calculating the exposed sensor length or scour depth. Here, three different sets of tests were conducted to validate this new technique. First, a single sensor was tested in ambient air, and its exposed length was varied. Upon verifying the sensing concept, a waterproofed prototype was buried in soil and tested in a tank filled with water. Sensor performance was characterized as soil was manually eroded away, which simulated various scour depths. The results confirmed that sensor resonant frequencies decreased with increasing scour depths. Finally, a network of 11 sensors was configured to form a distributed monitoring system in the lab. Their exposed lengths were adjusted to simulate scour hole formation and evolution. Results showed promise that the proposed sensing system could be scaled up and used for bridge scour topography monitoring.

• Water Engineering Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.159-168
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• 2000

In this paper, the increment of the local scour depth at piers by constructing the bridge between existing bridges is examined through the experiments in which 5 piers in the non-cohesive bed material in the experimental flume were installed. In the experiments the maximum distance of 25 times of the pier length and the maximum distortion width of 8 times of the pier width were utilized. Through the experimental studies, it was indicated that low flow, which can be characterized as the flow having low Froude numbers, the maximum bed configuration change is obtained when the piers are installed in the straight line in the flor direction without any distortion. However, In the high flow, which can be characterized as the flow having high Froude numbers, the maximum bed configuration change is obtained when the piers are installed with some distortion from the flow direction. The influence of the bed configuration by interaction between bridge piers is changed depending upon the Froude numbers, the distance between piers, and the distortion width between adjacent bridge piers. Also, because the scour patterns are affected by the bed configuration, the maximum scour should be increased by about 60% compared to that in a single pier if the interaction between bridge piers exists. It can be suggested that the maximum scour depth at bridge piers predicted by applying the existing equations should be increased if the interaction between bridge piers exist. Those cases are found when new bridges are constructed successively in the river in the urban area.

• Korean Journal of Hydrosciences
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• v.2
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• pp.39-59
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• 1991

Scour at bridge pier is a complicated three-dimensional problem involving interaction of fluld force on movable aid nonuniformily distributed sand grains. Although several analytical solution approaches, experimental research and field investigations for scout at piers have been conducted, no comprehensive and universally acceptable solution is so far available. Even though many methods and equations for predicting scour at piers are available in the literature, hydraulic and/or bridge design engineers are often at a loss over which method or equation is applicable for the specific bridge sites. To provide better understanding about scour phenomena and better predicting of scour at piers, intensive research is conducted through comprehensive review of published literature. Based on the research the state-of-the-art of pier scour prediction for design application is provided as a design guide for practicing engineers in this field. Recommendations for applying aggradation and degradation, contraction scour, and local scour prediction methods or equations are suggested. It is hoped that this paper may provide good information for the prediction of scour at piers.

• Water Engineering Research
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.243-259
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• 2001

Local phenomena around bridge piers and abutments are generally considered to be similar, nevertheless the presence of the incoming boundary layer on the side wall in the abutment case generates extra pressure gradients and consequently a more complex vortex pattern. In the literature, experimental data for bridge abutments are relatively scarce; in particular almost no data are available for the time evolution of the scour. In this work we present the results of several long duration (3 days longrightarrow5weeks) clear water scour laboratory tests around bridge abutments; the time evolution of the erosion process is analysed with respect to local and global characteristic values (maxima, volume, hole shape). In particular we analyse the effect of the constriction ratio b/B between the transversal obstacle dimension and the flume width: in many practical situations abutments (or piers) obstruct a significant portion of the channel, so that the average acceleration due to constriction is expected to increase the scour effects of the local acceleration around the obstacle. Measured values for maximum scour are poorly predicted by literature formulas. Scour depths are positively correlated with the constriction ratio, but increases are smaller than expected from literature indications. Experimental results show that models for bridge piers cannot be directly applied to abutments; in particular, time scales for the latter are significantly larger than for piers.