Bridge Scour Evaluation

This document is the third of HEC 18, i.e., presents the state of knowledge and practice for the design, evaluation, and inspection of bridges for scour. It contains updated material not included in the second edition dated April 1993. This document is a revision to HEC 18 dated April 1993 which, in turn, was an update of HEC 18 dated Feburary 1991 and of the publication, "Interim Procedures for Evaluating Scour at Bridges," issued in September 1988 as part of the FHWA Technical Advisory T 5140.20, "Scour at Bridges." T 5140.20 has since been superseded by T 5410.23, "Evaluating Scour at Bridges" dated October 28,1991. This document contains revisions obtained from further scour-related developments and use of the 1993 edition of HEC 18 by the highway community

This report explores the current state of knowledge regarding bridge pier scour, assesses several methods for design estimates of scour depth, examines a structured methodology for scour depth estimation for design purposes, and highlights aspects of pier scour in need of potential further research.

The most common cause of bridge failures is from floods scouring bed material from around bridge foundations. Scour is the engineering term for the erosion caused by water of the soil surrounding a bridge foundation (piers and abutments). The purpose of this document is to provide guidelines for the following: 1. Designing new and replacement bridges to resist scour, 2. Evaluating existing bridges for vulnerability to scour, 3. Inspecting bridges for scour, 4. Improving the state-of-practice of estimating scour at bridges. This document is the fifth edition of HEC-18. It presents the state of knowledge and practice for the design, evaluation and inspection of bridges for scour. There are two companion documents, HEC-20 entitled "Stream Stability at Highway Structures," and HEC-23 entitled "Bridge Scour and Stream Instability Countermeasures." These three documents contain updated material from previous editions and continued research by NCHRP, FHWA, State DOTs, and universities. This fifth edition of HEC-18 also contains revisions obtained from further scour-related developments and the use of the 2001 edition by the highway community. The major changes in the fifth edition of HEC-18 are: expanded discussion on the policy and regulatory basis for the FHWA Scour Program, including risk-based approaches for evaluations, developing Plans of Action (POAs) for scour critical bridges, and expanded discussion on countermeasure design philosophy (new vs. existing bridges). This fifth edition includes: a new section on contraction scour in cohesive materials, an updated abutment scour section, alternative abutment design approaches, alternative procedures for estimating pier scour, and new guidance on pier scour with debris loading. There is a new chapter on soils, rock and geotechnical considerations related to scour. Additional changes include: a new approach for pier scour in coarse material, new sections on pier scour in cohesive materials and pier scour in erodible rock, revised guidance for vertical contraction scour (pressure flow) conditions, guidance for predicting scour at bottomless culverts, deletion of the "General Scour" term, and revised discussion on scour at tidal bridges to reflect material now covered in HEC-25 (2nd Edition).

This document is the fifth edition of HEC-18. It presents the state of knowledge and practice for the design, evaluation and inspection of bridges for scour. There are two companion documents, HEC-20 entitled "Stream Stability at Highway Structures," and HEC-23 entitled "Bridge Scour and Stream Instability Countermeasures." These three documents contain updated material from previous editions and continued research by NCHRP, FHWA, State DOTs, and universities. This fifth edition of HEC-18 also contains revisions obtained from further scour-related developments and the use of the 2001 edition by the highway community. The major changes in the fifth edition of HEC-18 are: expanded discussion on the policy and regulatory basis for the FHWA Scour Program, including risk-based approaches for evaluations, developing Plans of Action (POAs) for scour critical bridges, and expanded discussion on countermeasure design...

Sponsored by the Water Resources Engineering (Hydraulics) Divsion of ASCE. This collection contains 75 papers and 321 abstracts presented at conferences sponsored by the Water Resources Engineering (Hydraulics) Division of ASCE from 1991 through 1998. The collection contains many new and expanded versions of the original papers and is designed to assist the practitioner with the concepts in evaluating stream instability and scour at bridges. Topics include: history of bridge scour research; bridge scour determination; stream stability and geomorphology; construction scour; instrumentation for measuring and monitoring; field measurement; computer and physical modeling of bridge scour; scour at culverts; and economic and risk analysis. One important paper contains 384 field measurements of local scour at piers made by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Streambed scour at bridge piers is among the leading causes of bridge failure in the United States. Several pier-scour equations have been developed to calculate potential scour depths at existing and proposed bridges. Because many pier-scour equations are based on data from laboratory flumes and from cohesionless silt- and sand-bottomed streams, they tend to overestimate scour for piers in coarse-bed materials. Several equations have been developed to incorporate the mitigating effects of large particle sizes on pier scour, but further investigations are needed to evaluate how accurately pier-scour depths calculated by these equations match measured field data. This report, prepared in cooperation with the Montana Department of Transportation, describes the evaluation of five pier-scour equations for coarse-bed streams. Pier-scour and associated bridge-geometry, bed-material, and streamflow measurement data at bridges over coarse-bed streams in Montana, Alaska, Maryland, Ohio, and Virginia were selected from the Bridge Scour Data Management System. Pier scour calculated using the Simplified Chinese equation, the Froehlich equation, the Froehlich design equation, the HEC-18/Jones equation and the HEC-18/Mueller equation for flood events with approximate recurrence intervals of less than 2 to 100 years were compared to 42 pier-scour measurements. Comparison of results showed that pier-scour depths calculated with the HEC-18/Mueller equation were seldom smaller than measured pier-scour depths. In addition, pier-scour depths calculated using the HEC-18/Mueller equation were closer to measured scour than for the other equations that did not underestimate pier scour. However, more data are needed from coarse-bed streams and from less frequent flood events to further evaluate pier-scour equations.

Full color, richly illustrated book. This manual is part of a set of HECs issued by FHWA to provide guidance for bridge scour and stream stability analyses.