Monitoring bridge scour

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (8769)

[EN] According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) the number of bridges declared ¿scour critical¿ total more than 26,000 just in the U.S.A. Besides, in spite of the significant investment in bridge scour research, these bridges still fail due to scour. It is believed that this is partially a consequence of inadequacies in both, design criteria adopted for older bridges and also the present state of knowledge about some aspects of bridge hydraulics and scouring. As a consequence, these bridges have to be protected with countermeasures and instrumented in order to reduce and monitor scour, respectively. ! The purpose of this report is therefore examine the existing knowledge on scour countermeasures focussing on monitoring critical bridges, with the aim of presenting a series of improvements in the current practice in the form of concept models, recommendations and suggestions. It also includes a brief introduction that will contextualise the reader into the upto- date scour knowledge as well as in its categorisations and historical background.