Recent development and remaining challenges in determining unique bridge scour performance indicators

Abstract

There have been significant developments in the area of vibration-based bridge scour monitoring in recent years. Traditional scour monitoring using either visual assessment or diving inspections are now recognised to be very unreliable and highly subjective. There has been a concerted effort to move towards reliable systems capable of either direct measurement of scour or indirect measurement, based on monitoring the response of the structure to damage. The developments have unearthed new challenges and problems. This paper describes some recent developments in the field. In addition, remaining challenges that act as a barrier to the successful wide-scale deployment of the methodologies are discussed. In particular, it addresses issues related to how to measure key performance indicators (such as the vibration response of the structure) and the potential of these approaches in real-world applications.