Investigating the effect of oblique bed sill on bridge pier scouring with circular cross-section

Local scouring around the pier is one of the main reasons for the instability of the bridges. Providing appropriate methods for predicting and controlling scour depth is one of the important issues that have been considered. Various methods have been proposed to control the scouring around the bridge pier. In this study, the effect of using the bed sill on scouring around the cylindrical bridge pier under clear water conditions has been investigated and compared in non-cohesive sediments. The bed sill has been placed at the downstream of the pier and its effect on reducing the scouring has been evaluated by changing distance between and the pier and sill geometry. In this research, a pier with 50 mm diameter was used. The results showed that bed sill setting has effect on scour reducing. Also, the distance and the shape of the sill have the greatest effect on reducing the scour. The placement of the straight and oblique bed sill at the backside of the pier resulted in a decrease of 11% and 16%, respectively, in the maximum of scour depth. By increasing the distance of sill to the oblique pier, its protective effect was reduced. Also the oblique bed sill more reduces the amount of scour around the pier relative to the straight bed sill and prevents the scour hole from developing to upwards.