Numerical investigation into abrasion damage of two adjacent cylindrical concrete bridge piers located in a mountain stream

Abrasive erosion induced by a mixture of fluid flow and fine particles is a typical type of bridge damage in the high mountain region of Southwest China. In this study, a field survey of abrasion damage to the Duxiufeng Bridge is carried out to investigate the practical abrasion damage state of two adjacent cylindrical concrete piers and their distribution. The rear surface of the bridge pier also experiences severe abrasion damage, which is often overlooked in single pier cases. Then, numerical models are built to investigate the abrasion damage, where the particles are modeled with discrete phase models. Cases with a single bridge pier and two adjacent cylindrical piers are used for analysis. The results indicate that the abrasion damage increases with the position varying from the middle of the front surface to the lateral sides of the circular cross section. This abrasion damage pattern is directly related to the flow velocity, which describes the energy distribution with the uniform fine particle size assumption. Diffraction and vortex shedding effects cause rear surface erosion. The damage state increases when there is an adjacent downstream bridge pier. The downstream bridge pier has a limited impact on the abrasion damage of the upstream pier on the front and side surfaces. Owing to the sheltering effect, the abrasion damage is significantly mitigated for the downstream bridge pier.