What is Bridge Scour?
Graduate Engineer Emma Bones explains bridge scour in about 90 seconds.
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Hi, my name is Emma Bones and today I am going to tell you all about bridge scouring. Mainly what it is and why we care about it, how we calculate it, and then what we can do to prevent it. Now, we’re really concerned with preventing bridge scour because scour is the erosion or removal of particles, sediment, dirt, rocks, from around the base of bridges, their abutment piers, and the opening. Now, we care so much about this because if this happens too much it can weaken the bridge’s foundation and cause it to fail, causing loss of life and damage to property. Now, in order to prevent bridge failure we must first know how to calculate bridge failure. Bridge failure is calculated using two main components, contraction scour and local scour. Now, contraction scour occurs as water is forced through a more narrow channel such as when water moves from the wider area of a river into the more narrow area of a bridge opening. The second component which is local scour, occurs around piers and abutments, so the scour happens locally in these areas. And this occurs as water is forced around them and scours away the sediment. Now, luckily there are some things we can do to prevent this, some of these include building piers and abutments deeper into the ground to prevent the scour hold from scouring them out. Other things include guide banks or armory or many other different solutions that can be used depending on the situation, the budget, and the amount of scour predicted.