In recent years, heavy rainfall disasters have caused frequent damage to bridge piers due to scouring and have resulted in the fall of bridges in many areas in Japan. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of local scouring around the downstream of the piers on the local scouring around the center of the river flowing at an angle to the piers. It was found that when the center of the river flows at an angle to the piers, the scouring area becomes wider from the upstream to the downstream of the piers because of the longer inhibition width of the piers positioned perpendicular to the water flow. The downstream scouring depth tends to be smaller than the upstream scouring depth. In addition, the time to the onset of tilting deformation of the piers increases with the inhibition width of the piers positioned perpendicular to the flowing water.

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To evaluate the stability of bridge piers affected by the local scouring, the existing formulas for estimating the maximum local scour depth have been developed based on the results of experiments conducted under a constant water level. However, the applicability of these formulas to the cases where the water level rises and falls, such as a water level change in a real river, is not clear. In this study, water flow experiments were conducted on cylindrical and oval bridge pier models to investigate the effect of iterated water level change on the progression of local scour around piers. Results of experiments with cylindrical and oval pier showed that the local scour depth and length increased by an iterated action of the water level change; however, these values converged after the number of iterated actions reached a certain time. The local scour length at upstream of the bridge pier was approximately 1.8 times larger than the theoretical value, which was calculated through the local scour depth and angle of repose in water. The local scour length is an important parameter for defining the streambed protection zone, which is one of the measures against local scour, and we showed that the streambed protection zone needs to be defined more widely.

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