Investigation of flow dynamics around submerged bridges

Floods are the most common cause of bridge failures, thus studies of bridge superstructures' hydrodynamic properties and how they interact with floods are essential for designing safe and resilient bridges. Current research on the interactions between flow and bridges is limited to the study of flow around generalized cylinders; therefore, this study aims to investigate the flow field around submerged bridges with typical bridge geometry. The flow structure around scale bridge models was examined in a laboratory setting, using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The PIV data was utilized to estimate the mean velocity field and visualize streamlines and flow structures. The dimensionless parameters from the flow structures were also estimated from the PIV data to investigate the hydrodynamic forces applied to different bridge geometries. The results of this study indicate that hydrodynamic force coefficients are significantly influenced by the extent of the wake region and the presence of vortices.