Extreme rainfall events associated with global warming are likely to produce an increasing number of flooding scenarios. A large magnitude of hydrologic events can often result in submerged orifice flow (also called pressure flow) or embankment and bridge overtopping flow, in which the foundation of a bridge is subjected to severe scour at the sediment bed. This phenomenon can cause bridge failure during large floods. However, current laboratory studies have focused on only cases of free-surface flow conditions, and they do not take bridge submergence into account. In this study, abutment scour experiments were carried out in a compound channel to investigate the characteristics of abutment scour in free-surface flow, submerged orifice flow, and overtopping flow cases. Detailed bed contours and three components of velocities and turbulent intensities were measured by acoustic Doppler velocimeters. The results show that the contracted flow around an abutment because of lateral and/or vertical contraction and local turbulent structures at the downstream region of the bridge are the main features of the flow responsible for the maximum scour depth around an abutment. The effects of local turbulent structures on abutment scour are discussed in terms of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) profiles measured in a wide range of flow contraction ratios. The experimental results showed that maximum abutment scour can be predicted by a suggested single relationship even in different flow types (i.e., free, submerged orifice, and overtopping flow) if the turbulent kinetic energy and discharge under the bridge can be accurately measured.

[Truncated abstract] The hydrodynamic forces on a marine pipeline and the local scour around it are the most serious and important issues in designing and maintaining pipelines. This thesis explores the vortex shedding phenomena for the flow over smooth surface and rough surface isolated cylinders. This thesis also explores the two-dimensional and three-dimensional scour process beneath offshore pipelines numerically. A series of numerical models are proposed in this dissertation for the prediction of flow characteristics and the time development of local scour around pipelines. All the models presented in this thesis are deliberately developed based on novel lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), because in recent years it has been considered as a serious alternative to standard computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as it is ideally suited to massively parallel computations. The lattice Boltzmann method is described in details to reveal how it recovers the Navier- Stokes equations. Various grid refinement schemes available in literature are discussed and a slightly modified new scheme is proposed to remove oscillatory solutions at high velocity change regime. The proposed scheme is then validated against bench mark tests for low Reynolds number flow. A turbulent model based on LBM is developed in order to predict the vortex shedding flow around an isolated square smooth surface cylinder. The various local and global flow parameters and structure of vortices are validated against experimental and numerical data available in literature. The model is then extended to investigate the vortex shedding flow over an isolated rough surface cylinder as it has an engineering significance in the design process of pipelines. The model is employed to investigate the influence of pipe roughness on various local and global parameters of flow. ... Significant part of this thesis is aimed at modelling flow and local scour around pipelines employing LBM and cellular automata (CA) methods. The erosion mechanism of the CA method available in literature for sand particles is improved by defining the threshold of sediment entrainment on bed in a similar manner to that employed in the traditional scour models. The predicted scour profiles for various incoming flow conditions are found to compare well with the experimental results reported in the literature. The existence of lee wake erosion due to continuous generation of vortex shedding in the lee of the pipelines is revealed. The time development of the maximum scour depth below the pipe is also found to be in good agreement with the experimental measurements reported in literature Finally, a three-dimensional flow and scour model is developed in order to explore the scour process beneath pipelines. It is revealed that the three-dimensionality effects are more pronounced near the span shoulder. On the other hand, there exists a two-dimensional scour regime in the vicinity of the middle section of the suspended pipe. It is found that the propagation speed of the scour hole in the sapnwise direction remains almost constant at all stages of scour process.