Scour and scour countermeasures at bridge sites

Abstract

This paper examines scour and scour countermeasures at bridge piers and abutments. Abutment scour is by far more complex than its counterpart associated with piers because of the possibility of the presence of a floodplain. Notwithstanding this, the mechanism of scour at both piers and abutments is very similar; moreover, the failure mechanisms associated with both armoring and flow-altering countermeasures are not very different. In rivers with a floodplain, abutment scour becomes much more complex. In cases where the abutment ends at or near to the floodplain, it can initiate bank erosion, which clearly is an important erosion problem that is quite distinct from the customary scour at either an abutment in rivers without a floodplain or a pier. For this reason, abutment scour can be very site-specific while pier-scour is more generic in nature. To this end, the ability to identify the type of abutment scour that may form in a particular channel is closely related to an engineer’s ability to propose devices for effective scour countermeasure. By summarizing research efforts on using riprap as a pier or abutment countermeasure over the past few decades, this paper highlights the deficiencies of riprap in arresting pier scour. To this end, different failure mechanisms are identified. They are shear failure, winnowing failure, edge failure, bedform-induced failure and bed-degradation induced failure. Each failure mechanism can singly or, more likely, combine to cause the eventual breakdown of the riprap layer. The study shows that a riprap layer is vulnerable to other failure mechanisms even though it is adequately designed against shear failure, rendering it ineffective in arresting scour.

Keywords

abutment scour / pier scour / river engineering / scour countermeasure / riprap protection / sediment transport

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