Simulation Study on Local Scour Characteristics of Tandem Bridge Piers in a Straight River under a Changing Environment

Abstract

Hydrodynamics is a common manifestation that causes natural scouring of riverbeds, and it is one of the factors that exacerbate the natural disasters of local scouring of bridge piers, causing sustainability of environmental changes in the water. The evolution pattern and scour characteristics of the bed surface around the submerged structures under different scouring conditions vary greatly. In order to investigate the scour mechanism, the reformed group (RNG) turbulence model in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software (v11.2) was used to simulate the scour under the clear-water scour and live-bed scour environments, and different scour morphology characteristics around the tandem piers under the clear-water scour and live-bed scour environments were obtained in the final simulation. By capturing the cross-sectional vortex and bed shear stress during the scouring process, the characteristic pattern of scouring topography around the pier and the relationship between the scour hole structure scale were analyzed, and the relationship equation between the development of scour depth and time scale was established. The study shows that: under the clear-water scouring environment, the sediment transport rate lags behind, but the contribution time is superior; under the live-bed scouring environment, by the shading and reinforcement influence of the upstream piers, the extent and development of the downstream pier surrounding the scour hole is small; the development trend of the maximum sediment transport rate of the scour hole and the great value of the shear stress is more synergistic, and the peri-pier eddy is positively correlated with the bed shear stress; through the regression equation to compare the relevant test and simulation results, the two are in good agreement, indicating that the simulated local scour evolution law is consistent with the actual law.