Effect of Model Scale in Bridge Piers Scour Experiments

The scour around the bridge piers causes instability of them, and without applying an appropriate solution, it eventually leads to demolition of the structure. Therefore, study on the mechanism of the occurrence of the scour and effective parameters on the amount of scour are important. This study was preformed to find the effect of bridge pier’s dimension on the scour depth. Therefore, the tests were carried out for cylindrical bridge piers with diameters of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mm in clear water condition with relative velocities (water velocity over scour critical velocity) of 0.95, 0.86, 0.76 and 0.67 in a laboratory flume. The mean size of bed particles was equal to 0.51 mm. The results showed that with an increase of 13.15 percent in relative velocity of the flow from 0.76 to 0.86 for pier with diameter of 40 mm, also with an increase of 20 percent in the pier diameter from 50 to 60 mm at the flow relative velocity of 0.95, the scour depth increased 38.8 and 10.34 percent, respectively. In addition, by analysis of the experimental results, the pier with diameter of 40 mm was an appropriate one with suitable diameter so it was proposed for the other similar experiments.