Clear-water local scouring around three piers in a tandem arrangement

Experiments of local scouring around three piers were carried out under steady clear-water conditions. We investigated the role of pier spacing and flow rate in scour depth and progression. The scour-hole depth around the upstream pier was the same as that for single piers and independent of pier spacing. The scour behavior of the middle and downstream piers progressed through a synchronous scouring region, a transition region, and a radical deviation region as the fluid velocity increased. The critical velocity from the synchronous scouring region to the transition region for the middle and downstream piers was the same, which linearly increased with pier spacing. The degree of deviation in the radical deviation region for the middle and downstream piers was dependent on the pier spacing. The critical velocity from the transition region to the radical deviation region for the middle pier increased with the pier spacing. When the spacing was larger than 11 times the diameter of a pier, the scour depths of the three-pier configuration were the same as for the single piers, which indicates the limit of inter-pier fluid–structure interaction. Finally, the data from this study are used to derive adjustment factors to predict the local scour depth around three piers.