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Estimating Equilibrium Scour Depth at Cylindrical Piers in Experimental Studies |
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| Authors: | Gonzalo Simarro Cristina M. S. Fael António H. Cardoso |
| Affiliation: | 1Researcher, Dept. of Marine Geology, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain; formerly, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain (corresponding author). E-mail: gonzalo.simarro@uclm.es, simarro@icm.csic.es 2Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilha, Portugal. E-mail: cfael@ubi.pt 3Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal. E-mail: ahc@civil.ist.utl.pt |
| Abstract: | Using data from six very long experiments on local scour at single cylindrical piers, some of the existing equilibrium criteria found in the literature are assessed. It is found that common criteria, which consider scour depth increments in 24?h or the observation of horizontal plateaux in records of scour depth time evolution, can incur important errors on the equilibrium scour depth. Using some of the expressions for time evolution found in the literature to fit the experimental data and infer equilibrium scour depth through extrapolation to infinite time, it is found that the equilibrium scour depth cannot be specified, in general, for experiments shorter than one to two weeks. |
| Keywords: | Scour Equilibrium Bridge foundations Bridge failures Piers Experimentation |