Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

A COUNTERMEASURE FOR SCOUR REDUCTION AT BRIDGE ABUTMENTS

K. Khodemi1 and M. Shafai Bejestan2

Abstract

During past few decades the cause of many bridge failures reported to be abutment scour. A great number of researches have been conducted to developed countermeasures for safety of the existing bridges. Submerged vane is a new technique which has been used for many practical river engineering works and in this paper the results of primary tests for the case of abutments are presented. Several tests were conducted with and without vane. Different location, number of vanes and vane angles were examined. The conclusion was that vane can effectively force the flow to separate from the abutment causing reduction of scour depth at the toe of abutment.