Effects of pile-cap elevation on scour and turbulence around a complex bridge pier

ABSTRACT In this study, the local scour and the associated flow hydrodynamics around a complex pier with rectangular pile-cap at three different pile-cap elevations are investigated. The pile-cap elevations were selected with respect to the initial sand bed, such that the pile-cap was unexposed (case I), partially exposed (case II), and fully exposed (case III) to the flow. The experiments were performed in a recirculating flume under clear-water scour conditions, and the instantaneous flow velocity was obtained at different vertical planes using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. The partially exposed pile-cap case showed the maximum obtained scour-depth (MSD). The reason behind the MSD occurrence in case II was enunciated through the analysis of turbulent flow field which showed that as the pile-cap got exposed to the flow, it dominantly affected the generation of vortices from the pile-cap corners responsible for the higher scour depth. The effect of the pile-cap on the flow field was prominently seen in case III through the mean velocities, vorticity, Reynolds shear stresses and turbulent kinetic energy contours, but since the pile-cap was away from the bed, the pile-cap corners did not show any direct effect on the scour.