Constructing Scour Fragility Curves for Piled Bridge Piers from Flume Experiment Data

Constructing Scour Fragility Curves for Piled Bridge Piers from Flume Experiment Data

The escalating scale of natural disasters increasingly threatens civil infrastructure. In particular, earthquakes and floods are two major types of disasters that can result in damage to key civil structures such as bridges. This preliminary study proposes a procedure for constructing scour fragility curves from flume experiment data for piled bridge piers. Several experiments were conducted and the variation in the scouring process was observed. The scour depths observed were used to develop scour fragility curves for the piled bridge piers. A methodology to construct the scour fragility curves was presented. The main purpose of this paper is to show how to use the flume experiment data to build the scour fragility curves defined as a function of the pile length embedded ratio. The measured trend of the curve is consistent with the general scouring process and the realistic behavior of the piled bridge pier damage sequence. This paper has shown a feasible methodology to construct the scour fragility curves from flume experiment data. However, further studies are necessary in order to find solutions for the problems mentioned in the preliminary study.