Student Number : 9700136A - PhD thesis - School of Civil and Environmental Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / A sediment budget model in which each steady discharge scours sediment along a trajectory towards ultimate target storage or deposits sediment towards the same ultimate target storage has been conceptualized and developed. The method is aimed at routing sediment in morphologically diverse bedrock-controlled channels in which sediment transport and storage is not a continuous process in space and time and mostly occurs in response to discrete discharges. The relative value of the ultimate stable scour depth (Huss) for each steady discharge with respect to the current scour depth after adding sediment supply determines the potential to scour or store sediment. Scour depths measured at discrete locations along the longitudinal profile of a laboratory pool at discrete times until changes in scour were not discernible for each steady discharge and sediment size have been integrated to provide the Huss and storage depletion curve. The experimentally established dependence of scour depth on critical flow depth, settling velocity and sediment supply formed the basis of generating dimensionless Huss and storage depletion curve from these parameters using the Buckingham π theorem. The optimization of experimental results to generate the storage depletion curve gave the exponent of time (φ) and the exponential decay factor (k) as 0.5 and 0.0040207 respectively. Regression fit of dimensionless Huss and critical flow intensity gave a linear relationship with a gradient of 0.90214, y-intercept of –1.4766 and R2 of 96%. The suitability of the model for budgeting sediment dynamics in a series of connected storage units, the validity of using the relative values of Huss and the current scour depth after adding sediment supply to determine scour potential and the existence of active storage associated with sediment supply for each steady discharge have been confirmed experimentally. Modelling with equivalent steady discharges computed from unit stream power principles on the rising and the falling limbs of the hydrograph resulted in scour on the rising limb of magnitude dependent on the magnitude and sequence of the flood event, and less or no scour on recession. The modelling concepts and approach have thus been validated and the potential to reasonably simulate sediment storage changes in bedrock-controlled rivers demonstrated.

Yes / Local scour around submarine pipelines can affect the stability of the pipeline. The accurate estimation of the scour around submarine pipelines has been a hot topic of research among marine engineers. This paper presents results from a numerical study of clear-water scour depth below a submarine pipeline for a range of the steady flow conditions. The flow field around the pipeline under scour equilibrium condition is numerically simulated by solving the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the standard k-ε turbulence closure. The flow discharge through the scour hole for various flow conditions is investigated. The results are used to establish the relationship between the flow discharge and the maximum scour depth. Incorporated with the Colebrook-White equation, the bed shear stress is obtained and an iterative method is proposed to predict the scour depth around the submarine pipeline. The calculated scour depths using the present method agree well with the laboratory measurements, with the average absolute relative error being smaller than that using previous methods, indicating that the proposed method can be used to predict the clear-water scour around the submarine pipeline with satisfactory accuracy. / National Nature Science Fund of China (Grant No.50879084, 51279189), the Open Fund from the State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University (SKHL1302),China Scholarship Council, Public Projects of Zhejiang Province (2016C33095) and the Natural Science Fund of Zhejiang Province (LQ16E090004).

The bridge scour depths in cohesive soil have been predicted using the scour equations developed for cohesionless soils due to scarce of studies about cohesive soil. The scour depths predicted by the conventional methods will result in significant errors. For the cost effective design of bridge scour in cohesive soil, the Scour Rate In COhesvie Soil (SRICOS) for the singular circular pier in deep water condition was released in 1999, and has been developed for complex pier and contraction scour. The present study is the part of SRICOS-EFA method to predict the history of contraction scour, and local scours, such as abutment scour and pier scour. The main objective is to develop the prediction methods for the maximum and the uniform contraction scour depth, the maximum pier scour depth and the maximum abutment using flume test results. The equations are basically composed with the difference between the local Froude number and the critical Froude number. Because the scour happens when the shear stress is bigger than the critical shear stress, which is the maximum shear stress the channel bed material can resist from the erosion, and continues until the shear stress becomes equal to the critical shear stress. All results obtained from flume tests for pier scour have been conducted in Texas A&M University from 1997 to 2002 are collected and reanalyzed in this study. Since the original pier scour equation did not include soil properties. The effect of water depth effect, pier spacing, pier shape and flow attack angle for the rectangular pier are studied and correction factors with respect to the circular pier in deep water condition were newly developed in present study. For the abutment scour, a series of flume tests in large scale was performed in the present study. Two types of channel - rectangular channel, and compound channel - were used. The effect of abutment length, shape and alignment of abutment were studied and the correction factors were developed. The patterns of velocity and of scour were compared, and it was found that the maximum local scour occurred where the maximum turbulence was measured. For the contraction scour, the results obtained from a series of flume tests performed in 2002 and a series of flume tests for the abutment scour in the present study are analyzed. The methodologies to predict the maximum contraction scour and the uniform contraction scour in the compound channel was developed. Although all prediction methods developed in the present study are for the cohesive soils, those methods may be applicable to the cohesionless soils because the critical shear stress is included in the methods. All prediction methods were verified by the comparison with the databases obtained from flume test results and field data.

Yes / Pier scour has been extensively studied in laboratory experiments. However, scour depth relationships based on data at the laboratory scale often yield unacceptable results when extended to field conditions. In this study, non-uniform gravel bed laboratory and field datasets with gravel of median size ranging from 2.7 to 14.25 mm were considered to predict the maximum equilibrium scour depth at cylindrical piers. Specifically, a total of 217 datasets were collected: 132 from literature sources and 85 in this study using new experiments at the laboratory scale, which constitute a novel contribution provided by this paper. From the analysis of data, it was observed that Melville and Coleman's equation performs well in the case of laboratory datasets, while it tends to overestimate field measurements. Guo's and Kim et al.'s relationships showed good agreements only for laboratory datasets with finer non-uniform sediments: deviations in predicting the maximum scour depth with non-uniform gravel beds were found to be significantly greater than those for non-uniform sand and fine gravel beds. Consequently, new K-factors for the Melville and Coleman's equation were proposed in this study for non-uniform gravel-bed streams using a curve-fitting method. The results revealed good agreements between observations and predictions, where this might be an attractive advancement in overcoming scale effects. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the most sensitive K-factors.

Yes / Pier scour has been extensively studied in laboratory experiments. However, scour depth relationships based on data at the laboratory scale often yield unacceptable results when extended to field conditions. In this study, non-uniform gravel bed laboratory and field datasets with gravel of median size ranging from 2.7 to 14.25 mm were considered to predict the maximum equilibrium scour depth at cylindrical piers. Specifically, a total of 217 datasets were collected: 132 from literature sources and 85 in this study using new experiments at the laboratory scale, which constitute a novel contribution provided by this paper. From the analysis of data, it was observed that Melville and Coleman’s equation performs well in the case of laboratory datasets, while it tends to overestimate field measurements. Guo’s and Kim et al.’s relationships showed good agreements only for laboratory datasets with finer non-uniform sediments: deviations in predicting the maximum scour depth with non-uniform gravel beds were found to be significantly greater than those for non-uniform sand and fine gravel beds. Consequently, new K-factors for the Melville and Coleman’s equation were proposed in this study for non-uniform gravel-bed streams using a curve-fitting method. The results revealed good agreements between observations and predictions, where this might be an attractive advancement in overcoming scale effects. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the most sensitive K-factors.

Yes / Laboratory experiments are presented to investigate the effect of different piggyback pipeline configurations on the morphology of local scour under wave conditions. Scour depth and width around the pipelines under regular and irregular waves are measured and analyzed for a range of pipeline and wave conditions; such as the spacing between two pipes (G), gap between the main pipe and seabed (e), pipe diameter (D), wave height (H) and period (T). Experimental results reveal that both the scour depth and width around piggyback pipeline is much larger than those around single pipe under the same wave conditions. Scour depth increases with the increase of the Keulegan-Carpenter (KC) number and decreases with increase of G and e. When e exceeds 0.5D, scour depth tends to approach 0.When spacing G is greater than 0.4D, the destabilization from small pipe to large one is greatly reduced, resulting in scour depth around piggyback pipeline being close to that around single pipe. Similar to scour depth, scour width broadens with the increase of KC number increasing and decreases with the increase of G. Experiments also show that the effect of e on scour depth is greater than that of G under the same test conditions, while their impact on scour width is opposite. Furthermore, scour width under irregular waves is extended slightly compared with regular wave for otherwise the identical conditions. / National Natural Science Foundation (No. 51279189).

No / Several bridges failed because of scouring and erosion around the bridge elements. Hence, precise prediction of abutment scour is necessary for the safe design of bridges. In this research, experimental and computational investigations have been devoted based on 45 flume experiments carried out at the NIT Warangal, India. Three innovative ensemblebased data intelligence paradigms, namely categorical boosting (CatBoost) in conjunction with extra tree regression (ETR) and K-nearest neighbor (KNN), are used to accurately predict the scour depth around the bridge abutment. A total of 308 series of laboratory data (a wide range of existing abutment scour depth datasets (263 datasets) and 45 flume data) in various sediment and hydraulic conditions were used to develop the models. Four dimensionless variables were used to calculate scour depth: approach densimetric Froude number (Fd50), the upstream depth (y) to abutment transverse length ratio (y/L), the abutment transverse length to the sediment mean diameter (L/d50), and the mean velocity to the critical velocity ratio (V/Vcr). The Gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) method selected features with higher importance. Based on the feature selection results, two combinations of input variables (comb1 (all variables as model input) and comb2 (all variables except Fd50)) were used. The CatBoost model with Comb1 data input (RMSE = 0.1784, R = 0.9685, MAPE = 10.4724) provided better accuracy when compared to other machine learning models.

This analysis is an expansion of research done by Rollin Hotchkiss during his Ph.D work. The research uses fluid flow, sediment transport, and perturbation theory to predict where scour will occur in a variable-width channel. The resulting equations also determine equilibrium scour depth based upon the stream bed elevation derived from a dimensionless bed slope equation. Hotchkiss perturbed the width of the channel using a second order Taylor Series perturbation but neglected second order terms. The present work follows the same procedures as Hotchkiss but maintains the second order terms. The primary purpose is to examine how the additional terms impact the final equilibrium scour depth and location results. The results of this research show a slight variation from the previous work. With respect to a hypothetical case, there was not a significant amount of change, thereby verifying that scour migrates downstream with an increase in discharge. Interestingly, the comparison shows a slight increase in sediment discharge through the test reach analyzed. Supplementary to previous research, values of scour depth and location in terms of distance from the start of channel-width perturbation are provided; at the lowest discharge maximum scour occurs 4% of a wavelength upstream of the narrowest portion, and at the highest discharge maximum scour occurs at the narrowest point. Additionally, a one-dimensional HEC-RAS sediment transport model and a two- dimensional SRH flow model were compared to the analytical results. Results show that the model output of the HEC-RAS model and the SRH model adequately approximate the analytical model studied. Specifically, the results verify that maximum scour depth transitions downstream as discharge increases.

For a bridge engineer, it is very important to estimate the maximum scour depth around the piers as accurately as possible, in order to design the footing safely. Many experimental studies have been performed by several investigators until now, in order to obtain information about scouring mechanism. The aim of this experimental study is to examine the effect of inclination of the dual bridge piers on scour depth. The experiments have been conducted with dual pier models under clear-water conditions, for various uniform flow depths. Scour depths had been measured at four different points around the piers / namely upstream and downstream faces of both piers. Dimensional and non-dimensional scour curves have been developed and presented to show the temporal variation of scour depth. The depths of local scour around inclined piers have been observed to be smaller than the scour depths around vertical piers.