Scour depth estimation methods around pile groups

Pile groups have become more popular in structural designs due to economical and geotechnical reasons. It is also known that scour as the main cause of bridge failure can make serious damages and considerably threaten the safety of our environment. Thus, predicting scour depth is an essential step in designing bridges. This paper is a comprehensive review of local scour depth estimation methods around pile groups. Few studies investigated the effect of various parameters on the scour depth and some of them derived empirical equation for estimating the scour depth. Therefore, this review is divided into two different parts. In the first part, the experimental studies and results in the literature are reviewed. In the second part, those works that introduced methods for estimating scour depth are described. The methods of the second part are categorized into two sections: (1) empirical equations; (2) neural network procedures. The first section is the summary of those works that introduced empirical equations for estimating scour depth and the second section is the summary of recently introduced neural network procedures.