NSF Award
9360793
9360793 Bilanin The erosion of the river bed around bridge piers is commonly known as local scour and is induced by the recalculating juncture flow at the intersection of the pier and the river bed. Bridge failure caused by this phenomenon has long been an important issue with respect to both public safety and maintenance costs. Average total losses from the resulting damage can run up to a hundred million dollars annually. Nearly half a million bridges nationwide are potentially affected by local scour. A robust protective system is needed that can be retrofitted to existing bridge piers to mitigate the sediment transport. Recently, Continuum Dynamics, Inc. has made considerable progress in designing large-scale flow modification devices based on the successful in-house development of vortex control technology. The proposed effort will adapt these techniques together with the appropriate application of scaling and boundary layer analyses of the vortical flow near the river bed to the development of vortex alleviation systems for local scour mitigation. Various designs will be tested experimentally with sub-scale models to demonstrate the potential of the proposed vortex alleviation techniques in mitigating local scour and to identify a feasible design for Phase II. ***
