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Next Seminar:
April 25th, 2008
 Toward the Physics-Based Modeling of Bridge Foundation Scour: Integrating Numerical Simulations with Experiments
Fotis Sotiropoulos – Director, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, and Professor, Department of Civil Engineering
Abstract
Scour of the streambed at bridge foundations during floods is driven by the complex interaction of foundation-induced turbulent vortical structures with the mobile river bed. The fluctuating hydrodynamic forces induced by such vortices drive sediment transport and bed erosion and need to be modeled correctly in order to develop quantitatively accurate predictions of scour at real-life bridge foundations. A major thrust of our research is to develop and validate an advanced 3D, unsteady, numerical model capable of quantitatively accurate predictions of bridge foundation scour. In this talk I will review our recent progress in the numerical simulation of unsteady flow phenomena in real-life bridge piers and abutments. I will present a Lagrangian and an Eulerian model of sediment transport and discuss novel insights into the erosion and scour processes we have been able to obtain from the application of these models. Finally I will identify knowledge gaps into the fundamental physics of the scouring process that need to be filled from experiments in order to complete the development of the numerical model.
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