PROPOSAL OF A SCOUR DAMAGE RISK MANAGEMENT FOR BRIDGES USING INFORMATION ON SANDBAR DYNAMICS

Abstract

 The development of local scour around piers during floods often causes damage, such as tilting piers. Establishing a system that can accurately determine which piers are at high scour risk is important to prevent such damage. Conventional scour damage risk assessment is conducted using the data of scour depth surveys around piers. In this study, to select information to improve the efficiency of scour damage risk assessment, we investigated the relationship between the dynamics of sandbars and the data on scour depth around bridge piers over time. The results indicate a clear relationship between the development of local scour around piers and the movement and stabilization of sandbars. This paper showed that understanding sandbar dynamics around bridges could be determined from easily obtained aerial photographs in conjunction with the periodic work of scour depth around bridge piers leads to more efficient bridge damage risk management.