Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
DOI 10.1007/s00477-014-0961-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
Spacetime dynamics of bed forms due to turbulence around
submerged bridge piers
K. Sarkar C. Chakraborty B. S. Mazumder
Published online: 30 September 2014
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract This work presents a study of spatiotemporal
changes of scour-holes around sand embedded submerged
circular and non-circular cylinders with associated turbu-
lence properties and aims at analyzing the contribution of
each quadrant event to the Reynolds shear stress. Experi-
ments were carried out using submerged circular, elliptical,
square and triangular cylinders of same length having flow-
facing sides as the cylinder diameter with a common sub-
mergence ratio of 0.6. It is evident that upstream scour
depth was maximum for the circular cylinder and minimum
for the elliptical one. Interestingly, side-wise scouring rate
was significant for elliptical cylinder. The maximum
deposition region was formed at the downstream of the
triangular cylinder case; and for the square cylinder,
interestingly quite largest sediment accumulations occurred
at the two sides about the centerline. The bed elevation
spectra for all cases in downstream scour and deposition
region showed comparatively higher spectral slopes, where
positive bed slopes were generated except for the square
cylinder case. In the near-bed region of upstream scour
hole, the occurrence of probabilities were higher for
sweeping events and it was less for the elliptical cylinder,
where the bed was minimum negatively sloped, compared
K. Sarkar  B. S. Mazumder (&)
Fluvial Mechanics Laboratory, Physics and Applied
Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata 700 108,
India
e-mail: bijoy@isical.ac.in
K. Sarkar
e-mail: soundofphysiks@gmail.com
C. Chakraborty
Fluvial Mechanics Laboratory, Geological Studies Unit, Indian
Statistical Institute, Kolkata 700 108, India
e-mail: chandan@isical.ac.in
to other cylinders. In the downstream scoured location of
the elliptical cylinder, where comparatively lower bed
elevation was formed and the bed was negatively sloped,
mostly the ejections were the occurring events near the bed
region. However, for the other three cases with positive bed
slopes, sweeping events were the dominating in near-bed
region.
Keywords Spacetime dynamics  Local scour  5 MHz
Ultrasonic ranging system  Quadrant analysis  Wavelet
spectrum  Exceedance probability
1 Introduction
Local scour is a natural phenomenon caused by the flowing
water over alluvial beds in rivers and streams. It is the
outcome of the erosive action of the flowing water, which
erodes sediment materials from the river bed, banks of
natural streams and near obstacles like piers or abutments
of a bridge. Such immovable obstruction embedded in the
sediment bed restricts the area of flow in a stream channel.
Water interacts with the upstream edge of the obstruction
causing an increase in velocity around the sides accom-
panied by the development of various kinds of vortices like
horseshoe vortex, wake vortex for emerged pier-like
structures and trailing vortex in addition developed at the
top of such obstructions for submerged case (Ettema et al.
2006; Tsutsui 2008; Dey et al. 2008). Scour occurs when
fluid flow induced shearing stresses on the sand bed surface
reach such values that exceed the shearing strength i.e.
greater than the critical bed shear stress. Scoured region
may develop and the scoured bed material may be depos-
ited downstream of the obstruction. The construction of
bridges in alluvial channels causes a contraction in the
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water flow at the bridge site and hence the considerable
scour at the site. Local scour around such engineering
constructions changes the river morphology and sea bed,
and affects aquatic ecosystems and fish habitats quite
sensitively (Arlinghauset al. 2002; Armstrong et al. 2003;
Barkdoll and Huckins 2012). Therefore, the prediction and
the mechanism of scouring processes and the hydrody-
namics of flow around the piers are of great importance to
civil and mechanical engineers and researchers in the fields
of environmental fluid mechanics and ecology.
Extensive research works relevant to the various aspects
of method and geometry have been made in the past on
scour around sand-embedded cylinders with the main focus
on the estimation of temporal characteristics of maximum
scour depth experimentally and numerically and focussing
on the countermeasure techniques to reduce the local
scouring (Melville and Chiew 1999; Balachandar et al.
2000; Yanmaz 2001; Ali and Karim 2002; Ballio and Ra-
dice 2003; Oliveto and Hager 2005; Yanmaz and Kose
2007; Kirkil et al. 2008; Link et al. 2006, 2008). Dey et al.
(2008) introduced a submerged factor in determining the
scour depth and its relation to the horseshoe vortex circu-
lations for submerged bridge piers. Euler and Herget (2011,
2012) developed a simple analytical approach based on the
obstacle Reynolds and Froude numbers to determine the
local scour around submerged obstacles with various sub-
merged factors in the fluvial environment.
In spite of extensive experimental works on local scour
around piers, only very few investigations have been made to
understand the turbulent characteristics of flow and the
associated coherent structures within the scour hole (Istiarto
2001; Hopfinger et al. 2004; Bey et al. 2007; Kirkil et al.
2008; Termini and Sammartano 2012; Link et al. 2012; Iz-
adinia et al. 2013; Maity and Mazumder 2014; Keshavarzi
et al. 2014). Termini (2005) and Termini and Sammartano
(2008) investigated the influence of horizontal turbulence on
the bed form creation. Moreover, Termini and Sammartano
(2012) performed experimental studies to analyze scour
caused by a horizontal jet downstream of a rigid bed and the
role of turbulent flow structures within the scour hole. They
showed that the flow was characterized by alternating high-
low speed fluid regions which led to the formation of vertical
turbulent coherent structures. Singh et al. (2010, 2011, 2012)
performed series of experiments to identify the behavior of
the power spectral density of flow velocity and bed eleva-
tions over gravel and sand bed with the scale-dependent
statistical analysis of bed elevation increments. Recently,
Maity and Mazumder (2014) described the turbulence
properties over and within the crescentic scour-holes
induced at the upstream of a horizontal short cylinder placed
over the sandy bed transverse to the flow. However, neither
the implications of horizontal turbulence on the scour
geometry generated around different shaped submerged
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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
cylinders nor the multi-scale variability of temporal bed
elevations around submerged cylinders has been studied so
far which can be of a significant importance in high flood
situations, when water flows over unfinished bridge pier
constructions, flow over a caisson placed underwater at the
bottom around the piers for scour protection etc.
The present work aims at investigating the high-reso-
lution spatiotemporal local bed form changes and coherent
structures of turbulent flow around submerged pier-like
obstructions of different shapes embedded vertically in the
sand bed at a constant flow discharge. More precisely, the
investigation has been made to identify the different
deformed bed structures, the statistical characteristics of
bed migration, and the wavelet power spectral density of
temporal bed elevations to quantify the multi-scale vari-
ability due to submerged cylinders of different shapes.
Moreover, the near-bed velocity data over the stable
deformed bed structures around the piers are studied to
identify the associated turbulence properties and to deter-
mine the contribution of each quadrant event of turbulent
flow structures with a special attention to horizontal
turbulence.
2 Experimentation
2.1 Test channel
Experiments were conducted in a re-circulating closed
circuit laboratory flume (Mazumder et al. 2005) at the
Fluvial Mechanics Laboratory (FML) of the Physics and
Earth Sciences Division, Indian Statistical Institute, Cal-
cutta. The experimental channel has the dimension of 10 m
length 9 0.50 m width 9 0.50 m height. The flume walls
were made of Perspex windows over a distance of 8 m
providing a clear view on the flow. A centrifugal pump for
discharge was located outside of its main body. The outlet
pipe was fitted with a by-pass and a valve, so that the
discharge be adjusted to a desired maximum velocity. An
electromagnetic discharge meter with digital display was
fitted with the outlet pipe to facilitate its continuous
monitoring. The inlet and outlet pipes were freely sus-
pended from an overhead structure. The upstream bend of
the channel was divided into three sub-channels of equal
dimensions, and a honeycomb cage placed at each end of
the sub-channels to ensure smooth, vortex-free uniform
flow. To ensure identical operating conditions, the water
depth and discharge were kept constant for all experiments.
2.2 Set-up and measurement technique
A loose sand bed of thickness h0 (= 5.5 cm) and 7 m long was
put to cover the entire width (50 cm) of the flume. The
Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
upstream end of the sand bed was made slanted for about 0.5
m to diminish the disturbance due to the approach flow and it
was confirmed by several test runs of more than 6 h. The sand
materials had a median particle diameter d50 0:25 mm, a
standard geometric deviation gr 0:685 and a specific
gravity of 2.65. Series of experiments were conducted using
both circular and non-circular rigid cylindrical pier-like
obstacles with same diameter-length/flow-facing side
(d = 5 cm) embedded vertically in the sand bed at the flume
centerline. Thus, for all the experiments the ratio of channel
width/pier width was kept about 10 (=50/5) to avoid the wall
friction factor. According to the study of Raudkivi and Et-
tema (1983), the minimum value of the ratio between
channel width and pier width that could be used without a
measurable effect from the side walls on the local scour at the
pier is 6.25. Again, the flow depth to pier width ratio, i.e. flow
shallowness for the present study was about 5(=25/5) [ 2.6,
which is the limiting value for this ratio according to Melville
and Sutherland (1988), beyond which, the local scour depth
becomes independent of the flow depth. Furthermore, as
because in the present study, the relative sediment coarseness
d=d50 200 [ 50, the effect of sediment size on the scour
depth becomes insignificant according to the study of Chiew
and Melville (1987) and Melville and Sutherland (1988).
Non-circular shaped cylinders considered here were
elliptical, square and triangular respectively. For each
experiment, a single cylinder was placed at a distance 6 m
from the channel inlet. All the cylindrical objects have a
common submergence ratio S, i.e. height of the cylinder to
the flow depth is equal to 0.6. For all four experiments, the
flow discharge (Q = 0.015 m3/s) was chosen in such a way
that the bed shear stress far from the cylinder was less than
the critical bed shear stress so that the sand particle could
not initiate motion, i.e. when there was no sediment motion
at the bed except near the cylinder. However, in the
vicinity of the cylinder the bed shear stress was strong
enough to cause sediment motion. Here no bed forms, such
as ripples and dunes were witnessed along the stream
direction on the sediment bed except at the area of local
scour and deposition in the vicinity of cylinders. Flow
depth was kept constant at h = 25 cm for all experiments
and the hydraulic slope was about an order of 0.0001.
The velocity dip phenomenon, i.e. the position where
the maximum velocity appears below the free surface,
according to the report of Yang et al. (2004) and Absi
(2011), took place even if the aspect ratio of the flume
width to flow depth is less than about 6. From the study of
numerous data, Yang et al. (2004) concluded that in narrow
channel condition, where maximum longitudinal flow
velocity was obtained in channel center, even for the
channel width to flow depth ratio of around 2, the dip
phenomenon took place. According to Long et al. (1990)
and Tachie et al. (2004), a two-dimensional flow in the
997
channel center was achieved with flume width/depth ratio
of 2. As in the present study, the maximum longitudinal
velocity occurred at the flow depth of about 20 cm, i.e. the
channel width/flow depth was about 2.5. This led to two-
dimensional flow condition at the channel center declining
the possibilities of secondary flow. According to Cardoso
et al. (1989) the dip phenomenon was attributed to the
weak secondary currents (Maity and Mazumder 2014).
Instantaneous sand bed elevation (z) data were contin-
uously recorded using SeaTek 5 MHz Ultrasonic ranging
system (URS) composed of 24 transducers. The system was
mounted in an aluminium trolley placed as submerged
condition just at the free surface over the pier location for
each experiments. Each transducer possessed a high pre-
cision of 0.01 cm and was capable of sample collection
at 4 Hz rate. Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of the
experimental set up with all transducers mounted in the
aluminium trolley, which covers the area over the
embedded cylinder. Figure 2ac shows the transducers
placed on the trolley, the experimental set up and a sche-
matic of the 24 transducer locations. The transducers are
referred as Tr-1, Tr-2,...Tr-24. Transducer (Tr-12) placed
just over the center of the cylindrical pier assures that the
pier remains fixed without any oscillations.
The processes of bed evolution with local scour and
depositions at different locations around the cylinders were
measured by URS continuously for 200 min for each of the
four experiments. During the experimental time of
200 min, i.e., up to the stable bed form, continuous video
recording of bed form topography through the glass side of
the flume was made. The video recording was stopped
nearly at the time of stable bed condition, because the main
motivation was to investigate the spatiotemporal evolution
of scouring and the bed deformation pattern due to cylin-
drical obstacles of different shapes. The shape of the
scouring zone and the rate of scour depth became negli-
gible after about 200 min of run for all the cases. This was
confirmed by test runs, critically measuring the scoured bed
form structures continuously for a longer period of time
(about 300 min), when less than 0.15 cm scour was
recorded per hour. In this study, this condition was chosen
to be the stable bed condition.
When the stable bed condition attained, the aluminium
trolley with URS was removed and the near-bed velocity
data were collected at each location of transducer around the
cylinder using a SonTek 0.05 m down-looking 3-D Micro-
acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) for 3 min (180 s) at a
sampling rate of 40 Hz from each position. The size of the
sampling volume of 16 MHz ADV is 9 9 10-8 m3. The
sampling volume is approximately cylindrical oriented
along the transmitter beam axis. The ADV is high precision
equipment that measures all three components of velocity
with fluctuations. Factory calibration of the ADV is specified
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Fig. 1 Schematic of experimental set-up: water channel, 5 MHz URS, sand bed, cylindrical pier

Fig. 2 a Transducers placed at

different arrays on the trolley,
b photograph of the
experimental set-up,
c schematic of the locations of
transducers over the cylindrical
pier

to be 1.0 % of the measured velocity. After the velocity measurements of the entire deformed area originated due to
measurements, the flow was stopped for each case and the different submerged cylinders were made accordingly. In
water was drained out slowly from the flume. The scale narrow channels as in the present study, the flow velocity in

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Table 1 Scale measurement of the stable deformed beds
Properties Case I: circular cylin. Case II: elliptical cylin.
Scour radius (distance from cylinder center in cm)
Along flow 9.5 8.7
Transverse to the flow 9.3 8.2
Deposition region (distance from cylinder center in cm)
Major deposition 11.3 (along the 10.9 (along the
centerline) centerline)
Affected deformed zone (in cm)
Length-wise 48.3 45.5
Breadth-wise 20.0 26.1
the middle of the channel was much greater than the average
flow velocity in flume. A separate test using ADV without
placing a pier in flume was conducted to calculate the flow
intensity u =ucr ; defined as the ratio of the shear velocity to
the critical shear velocity. In the present study, it came out to
be very close to the unity but above that, approximately 1.02.
3 Experimental observations and results
3.1 Evolution of bed form topography around cylinders
3.1.1 Photographic observations
The pattern of commencement of bed deformation around
different cylinders were quite different. The shapes of
submerged cylinders significantly changed the bed surface
area locally at the downstream of the respective cylinders.
Figure 3ad shows the final stable deformed areas around
the submerged cylinders of four different shapes of same
size, i.e., circular, elliptical, square and triangular respec-
tively. Table 1 shows the scaling measurement of the
deformed areas for these four cases. It is observed that the
scoured radii along and transverse to the flow with respect
to the cylinder center, the position of major deposition
regions at the downstream, and the overall shape of the
distorted area occurred due to the impact of the shape of
the cylinder. In fact, two basic forms of scouring took place
around the cylinders: one at the upstream of the cylinders
due to the formation of horse-shoe vortices causing frontal
scour, and the other occurred at the downstream side of
cylinders, followed by turbulent wakes causing the
deformed bed surface (Ettema et al. 2006; Tsutsui 2008).
Nearly equilibrium scour mark attained after a couple of
hours with a development of bed form structures at
upstream and downstream of cylinders.
The scouring at the upstream surface and deposition at
the downstream for the elliptical cylinder along the centr-
eline occurred faster than that of the circular cylinder. A
999
Case III: square cylin. Case IV: triangular cylin.
8.3 8.0
6.6 9.0
9.6 (at two sides of 9.7 (along the
the cylin.) centerline)
37.5 50.5
20.6 26.9
symmetric scoured and deposited deformed area about the
circular cylinder was observed, but the secondary bed
forms created by turbulent wakes at the downstream were
not symmetric. Similar bed form structures were also
observed for the case of elliptical cylinder, which implied
that circular and elliptical shapes belonged to the same
family. It seems that the upstream scoured radius in both
stream-wise and transverse directions were maximum for
the circular cylinder. No sediment ridge was observed
downstream of the circular cylinder, while a clear long
sediment ridge along the centreline was identified just
downstream of elliptical cylinder at the major deposition
area. The ridge width was minimum among these four
cases.
It is interesting to note that the shapes of the deformed
areas (both upstream and downstream) due to square and
triangular shaped cylinders about the flume centreline
appeared to be fully symmetric, that could be considered to
be in the same class. For the square cylinder, larger accu-
mulations of sediments were at two sides of the cylinder
centreline and for the triangular cylinder, deposition took
place around the downstream nose which was to be largest
accumulation among the four cases during the whole
experimental time. The effect of flow perturbation and
hence the bed deformation were seen to be highest for both
the cases in both directions. An interesting observation for
the square cylinder was that the sediments were largely
accumulated at the two sides about the centreline along
downstream, followed by a structure like water drop just
behind the square cylinder, which was not occurred for
triangular cylinder case, but a ridge transverse to the flow
behind the triangular cylinder was observed. The peak of
the downstream deposited area was generally highest for
the triangular cylinder case. A sediment ridge was found at
the downstream of major deposited area. At some distance
downstream of the cylinder center, lunate type bed forms
were created along two sides of centreline deposition
region with a scoured zone at the end of stoss side in the
upstream facing direction for the all the cases except the
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Fig. 3 Photographs of the deformed stable bed surface after 200 min of experimental time around the cylindrical piers: a circular, b elliptical,
c square and d triangular shape. The flow direction is from left to right

square cylinder. Going to further downstream of this area, Table 2 Starting time (in minute) of continuous erosion at different
the linguoid type of bed forms was observed specially in locations
the case of circular and elliptical cylinders. Transducer Circular Elliptical Square Triangular
no. cylinder cylinder cylinder cylinder
3.1.2 URS data analysis over deformed beds
5 92 45 60
6 15 21 3 6
The temporal changes in bed elevation at some time
7 9 9 15 9
intervals along Row 0 are shown in Fig. 4; and along Row
8 92 51 108 108
1- in Fig. 5 for all four cylinder cases with different
9
symbols mentioned in the figure captions. For better
10
understanding, starting time of bed erosion at different
selected transducer locations are presented in Table 2. 11 6 9 3 6
Along the Row 0, bed deformation started immediately 13 36 51 170 76
after a few minutes for the elliptical and square cylinders 14
following the other two (Table 2). Scouring started at two
side edges of the cylinder but those locations were too
close to be measured by the transducer set-up. The scoured be seen only after 9 min of the experiment for all cases.
bed materials were deposited just downstream of the cyl- Interesting flip-flops could be easily seen from the temporal
inder along the centreline for all cases except the square bed elevations in Fig. 4 at the location of Tr-13 and Tr-14.
cylinder which was evident from Fig. 4. For the square Approximately up to 12 min, Tr-13 was seen to have
cylinder major accumulation of eroded sand materials took maximum deposition along the centreline for all the cases,
place at the two sides about the centreline just downstream followed by a transition at approximately 20 min to the
of the cylinder after 56 min which can be verified by the location of Tr-14. Then continuous decrements in bed
temporal bed elevations along Row 1- (Fig. 5). The elevation were seen at the location of Tr-13. In Fig. 5,
deposited sediment peak at the downstream was highest for slanted S-shaped bed profiles along the flow direction
the case of triangular cylinder which developed after (like Sigmoid Growth function) were observed to be gen-
89 min, while it was lowest for the square cylinder case. erated with time. Erosions started at the downstream of the
Significant changes in bed elevations along Row 1- could cylinder along the Row 0 approximately after 36 min for

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Fig. 4 Temporal changes in bed
elevation at some time intervals
along Row 0 for a circular,
b elliptical, c square and
d triangular cylinder
respectively. The flow direction
is from left to right
the circular cylinder case, which was the fastest; and 51,
170 and 76 min for elliptical, square and triangular cylin-
ders respectively. Whereas, along the Row 1- at the
downstream of the cylinder, scouring started approximately
after 92 min of the experiment for the circular cylinder,
51 min for the elliptical cylinder and for the other two, it
was approximately after 108 min (Table 2). From the
aforementioned figures, it was evident that the rate of
scouring events at the side of cylinder (Tr-7) was signifi-
cantly greater than that at other locations for the elliptical
cylinder. Whereas, for other three cases, major erosion
occurred at the cylinder upstream location (Tr-11).
Figure 6ad depicts the surface contour plots of bed
elevations for the case of circular, elliptical, square and
triangular cylinder respectively. The bed deformations of
first 60 min for all the cylinder shapes were shown for
significant comparative study. As soon as the flow started,
the bed movements started for the elliptical cylinder and a
maximum of 10 cm sediment peak was achieved at the
downstream. After a while tremendous eroded sediment
1001
accumulation was identified in the vicinity of the down-
stream nose of the triangular cylinder. At around 6 min it
attained a maximum elevation (z = 12 cm) which was
approximately about 1.2 times of the maximum deposition
of circular and elliptical cylinders and about 1.5 times of
the maximum deposition of square cylinder which was
created at nearly 45 min along the Row 1- and Row 1?
just downstream of the cylinder. Now, our aim is to
investigate how the gradients or slopes of the overall bed
was changed temporally and to make the comparative
study. The bed gradient was measured as a quotient equals
to the rise divided by run, where rise of a bed profile
between two points is the difference between the elevation
of the bed at those two points and the run is the horizontal
distance of those two points. The contour maps of gradients
of the bed along downstream direction are plotted in Fig.
7ad and transverse to the flow direction in Fig. 8ad at
several instant of time till 60 min. From the initial stage,
quick changes in the bed gradients along and transverse to
the flow were observed for the elliptical cylinder case. For
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Fig. 5 Temporal changes in bed

elevation at some time intervals
along Row 1- for a circular,
b elliptical, c square and
d triangular respectively. The
flow direction is from left to
right

this case, at 3 min stoss-face slope gradient was -0.76 and
lee-face slope was 1.04 towards downstream, both of which
were the highest value for this case till the first 1 h of
experiment. However, for the elliptical case, with time the
bed was generally consisted of smaller sloped bed forms
compared to the other three cases. Interestingly, for the
case of square cylinder, bed gradients gradually increased
in view of both positive and negative sides as time pro-
gressed in the range -1.09 to 0.59 completely opposite to
the pattern of bed form generation for the elliptical cylin-
der. Comparatively, highest negatively sloped bed was
identified for the circular cylinder at the upstream of the

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Fig. 6 Surface contour plots of bed elevations (in cm) with time for
all four cases: (a circular, b elliptical, c square and d triangular
cylinder up to 60 min of experiments. The corresponding time (in
cylinder whose gradient is about -1.11, i.e., a slope of
*48 measured at 60 min and highest positively sloped
bed for the triangular cylinder at the downstream nose of
the structure, measured to be about 1.51, i.e., a slope of
*56 (at downstream stoss-face) at 6 min of the experi-
ment. Clear peak deposition region downstream the struc-
tures just after the bed form initiation can be identified
(Fig. 8ad). Clearly, for all of the four cases, peaks were
sharp at early stage within 36 min, and was most promi-
nent for the triangular cylinder case with gradients of 1.17
to -1.15 (towards the peak and back to lower bed), i.e.,
slope *49. After an initial stage, bed forms generally
consisted of lower sloped bed forms for all the cases as
time progressed.
At the end of experiment about 200 min, the surface
contour plots of bed elevation (z), gradients along and
transverse to the flow are shown in Fig. 9ad for the
deformed bed of each case. Scoured region downstream
of the structure was seen to be higher overall for the
circular and elliptical cylinder cases and along the cen-
terline it was maximum for the square cylinder case.
Scour depth was significantly smaller for the elliptical
1003
minutes) is written at the top right position in each figure box. The
flow direction is from left to right
cylinder, *0.66 times of the other cases. Maximum
deposition region was observed for the triangular cylinder
case with elevation (z) of 8.4 cm at *10 cm downstream
of the cylinder center along the centerline. The slope
along the flow for the upstream scoured region was
measured to be *47 for all the cases except the ellip-
tical cylinder, for which it was *37. Comparing with
Fig. 7ad, for the bed slopes along the flow, it can be
argued that after 60 min of experiments, negligible
change in the upstream sloped bed was identified for the
circular and square cylinder cases. In contrast, positive
gradients of the downstream bed were decreased com-
pared to the values at 60 min of the experiment for all the
cases. Maximum positive gradient of the bed was
observed for the triangular cylinder at downstream of the
cylinder nose at *8 cm distance, which is about 0.72 and
the minimum was calculated for the square cylinder case
at the two sides about the bed centerline just downstream
of the cylinder at *6 cm distance, which is about 0.54.
Towards the transverse direction, slopes were diminished
for all the cases in sight of both positive and negative
gradients with an average slope of 27.
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Fig. 7 Contour plots of gradients of bed along the flow with time for all four cases. All other descriptions in the caption are as in Fig. 4. The
corresponding time (in minutes) is written at the top left position in each figure box

3.1.3 Statistical characteristics of surface evolution
We intend here to investigate statistically the bed evolution
pattern at some selected locations indicated by transducers
(Tr-1, Tr-7, Tr-11 and Tr-13) for a period of total 200 min.
We choose such four locations for the present analysis
because each of them refers to important positions (Fig. 2c)
which represent the overall bed evolution pattern. At a
particular location, we define the change in bed elevation
dz(t) by,
dzt zt Dt  zt 1 analysis helps to estimate the chance of a natural, inherent,
where z(t) denotes the bed elevation at time t at that
location and Dt is the temporal resolution (here
Dt = 0.25 s) of the experimental data. Equation 1 leads to
three cases for the surface evolution process (Ganti et al.
2011; Singh et al. 2011, 2012): positive value of
dzt [ 0 corresponds to deposition (Di), negative value
of dzt\0 defines erosion (Ei) and dzt 0 denotes
inactivity at that time and at that location.
Here the exceedance probabilities of deposition
P(Di [ di ) and erosion events P(Ei [ ei ) are plotted in Fig.
10 for all four cases (circular, elliptical, square and
triangular cylinders) at four selected locations indicated by
Tr-1, Tr-7, Tr-11 and Tr-13, where di and ei are the ith bed
elevation in the descending order of Di and Ei respectively.
The exceedance probability is the probability that a certain
value is going to be exceeded. Present plots help to esti-
mate the probability that a certain deposition height or
scour depth recorded at any particular time during the bed
evolution will be exceeded during the whole experimental
time at certain location. As the bed evolution process is
purely stochastic in nature, the exceedance probability
or hydrologic risk of bridge failure due to unwanted major
bed deformation events. All of the distribution curves
indicate a heavy-tail behavior and considerably deviate
from the Gaussian pdf (shown as the dotted line).
From the figure, it is clearly seen that at the location of
Tr-1, probability of exceedance curves have similar pat-
terns for all four cases. Interestingly, for the square shaped
cylinder, slightly greater PDi and PEi are observed for
smaller bed elevation Di approximately up to 1 mm for
both depositional and erosional events, and then up to dz(t)
equals to 7 mm, PDi and PEi are observed to be greater
for the elliptical cylinder. Plots of Fig. 10 at Tr-1 clearly

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
Fig. 8 Contour plots of gradients of bed transverse to the flow with time for all four cases. All other descriptions in the caption are as in Fig. 4.
The corresponding time (in minutes) is written at the top left position in each figure box
indicate least or negligible effect in depositional or ero-
sional events due to different embedded structures. At the
location of Tr-7, maximum of Di or Ei is estimated which is
about 15 mm. For dz(t) up to 0.6 mm, equal probability of
exceedance is estimated for all the cases. Substantially
lower probability of exceedance for the circler cylinder is
seen for the higher values of dz(t). Comparing the proba-
bilities of exceedance Di and Ei at Tr-11 (just upstream of
the cylinder base) with that at Tr-7 (at the side of cylinder
base), it is clearly observed that for the elliptical cylinder,
the probability of exceedance is always greater for any
dz(t) at Tr-7 than that at Tr-11. Quantitatively,
dzt 1 mm gives PDi and PEi at Tr-7, approxi-
mately 90 % greater than those at Tr-11. For the circler
cylinder, PDi and PEi are substantially greater at the
location of Tr-11 than at Tr-7 up to dzt 2 mm. Simi-
larly, for square and triangular shaped cylinders, PDi and
PEi showed greater values for dz(t) up to 3 mm.
From the analysis, it is strongly recommended that the
scouring events at the side of the elliptical cylinder located
at Tr-7 is prominent, whereas most of the events respon-
sible for major deposition or erosion up to dzt 3 mm is
1005
concentrated at the location of Tr-11 for other three cyl-
inders. Interestingly at Tr-11, for circler and elliptic shaped
cylinders, approximately same probability of exceedance is
estimated for slightly higher values of dz(t) for the ero-
sional events (Ei) than for the depositional events (Di).
Plots at Tr-13 readily reveals that for dz(t) up to 1 mm,
PDi and PEi are slightly greater for the elliptical cyl-
inder than other three cases. Actually, for dz(t) up to 8 mm
for all the cases except the square shaped cylinder, both
PDi and PEi are maximum at this location, (Tr-13 just
downstream of a cylinder base), whereas the maximum
exceedance probability is observed at the location of Tr-7
for all cases beyond dzt 8 mm. Interestingly, for the
square shaped cylinder, PDi and PEi possessed much
smaller values for dzt [ 0:6 mm at Tr-13 than at Tr-7 or
Tr-11 and quite smaller relative to the other three cases at
Tr-13 too.
3.1.4 Multi-scale analysis of bed topography
Temporal bed elevations exhibit multiple scales of variability
and time-dependent frequency content. A common way to
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1006 Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017

Fig. 9 Contour plots of bed elevations, gradients of bed along and transverse to the flow at the end of experiment after about 200 min for all four
cases: a circular, b elliptical, c square and d triangular cylinder. The flow direction is from left to right

Fig. 10 Exceedance
probabilities of deposition and
erosion events i.e., PDi [ di
and PEi [ ei for all the cases:
circular cylinder (black filled
diamond symbols), elliptical
cylinder (red open circle
symbols), square cylinder (green
triangle symbols) and triangular
cylinder (blue times symbols) at
four selected locations viz. Tr-1,
Tr-7, Tr-11 and Tr-13.
A Gaussian pdf is shown as
(dash-dotted lines) in each
figure box

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
characterize the variability across a wide range of scales is
determined through the power spectral density. Here the
wavelet transform technique is used. In contrast to the Fourier
transform, the wavelet transform uses base functions (wave-
lets) that have smooth ends per sec (Lau and Weng 1995;
Mackenzie 2002). Wavelets are the small packets of waves;
they are defined by a specific frequency and decay towards
either end. Since the wavelet functions are compact, the
wavelet coefficients only measure the variations around a
small region of the data array. The localized nature of the
wavelet transform allows easily to pick out features in the data,
by accurately measuring the energy distribution across a range
of scales. The localization means that a wavelet coefficient at a
point is not affected by the coefficient of another point in a
signal, which enables this procedure to remove noises of all
different scales from a signal. Mathematically, a wavelet
transform decomposes a signal yt into elementary functions
wa;b (t) derived from a mother wavelet w(t) by dilation and
translation,
 
1 tb
wa;b t w 2 f fc =a
a1=2 a
where a is a scaling parameter (dilation) that sets the fre-
quency represented by the wavelet and b determines the time
center (translation) of the wavelet (Lau and Weng 1995;
Debnath 2002). The Continuous Wavelet Transform
(CWT), W (wavelet coefficients), of the signal yt about the
mother wavelet w(t) is defined as the convolution integral,
Z   Singh et al. 2010, 2011, 2012) have reported the scaling
1  tb
Wa; b w ytdt 3
a1=2 a analysis or structure function analysis of bed elevation
where the scale and time center are still determined by the
parameters a and b of the wavelet. For this study, we used
Mexican hat wavelet as the mother wavelet for the com-
putation of wavelet coefficients of bed elevations at a range
of scales, which is defined as,
2
wt 1  t2 et =2
4 is a clear transition from one scaling regime to another or
This is the basic form of the wavelet from which dilated
and translated versions are derived and used in the wavelet
transform. The Mexican hat is, in fact, the second deriva-
2
tive of the Gaussian distribution function et =2 : that is,
p
with unit variance but without the usual 1/ 2p normali-
zation factor. Mexican hat is better at identifying single
maxima and minima than other mother wavelets. The rel-
ative contribution of the signal energy contained at a spe-
cific a scale and b location is given by the two-dimensional
wavelet energy density function,
Ea; b jWa; bj2 5
A plot of Ea; b is known as a scalogram (analogous to the
Spectrogram in Fourier transform). The relative
1007
contribution to the total energy contained within the signal
at a specific scale a, known as the wavelet power spectrum,
is obtained by integrating over all locations b:
Z
WSa jWa; bj2 db 6
To compare the scale dependent wavelet energy spectrum
of the signal WSa of the bed elevation data instantly with
the Fourier energy spectrum of the signals, we can convert
it to a frequency dependent wavelet energy spectrum
WSw f by converting the wavelet scale a to a character-
istic frequency of the wavelet. We use one of the most
commonly used characteristic frequencies used in practice,
i.e. the passband center of the wavelets power spectrum.
Knowing the facts that the spectral components are inver-
sely proportional to the dilation, i.e. f / 1=a and the
passband center frequency of the mother wavelet is defined
as fc , hence the characteristic frequency associated with a
wavelet of arbitrary scale a is given by
7
where the passband center of the mother wavelet fc
becomes a scaling constant and f is the representative or
characteristic frequency for the wavelet at scale a. For the
p
Mexican hat mother wavelet, fc is equal to 5=2=2p.
Various previous studies (Nikora et al. 1997; Nikora and
Walsh 2004; Aberle and Nikora 2006; Aberle et al. 2010;
properties of gravel/sand bed topography using spectral
increments at different scales. Figure 11 shows the wavelet
spectra of bed elevation increments measured at the loca-
tions of Tr-6 to Tr-11, Tr-13 and Tr-14 for all the four
cases. Spectral slopes with corresponding scaling range for
all the cases at the referred locations have been obtained
and shown in Table 3. The spectra readily reveal that there
simply a break in scaling at some intermediate frequency.
At some positions, flatter spectra are detected in between
two clear scaling range i.e., a spectral gap which denotes a
range of intermediate scales with no additional energy
contribution. On an average a clear scaling range (loglog
linearity) is observed for all the cases with a similar
spectral slope ranging 1.911.93 for circular, elliptical and
square cylinder cases, whereas for the triangular cylinder,
the spectral slope is the highest with a mean of 1.99.
Individually the slope of the wavelet spectrum in the log
log linearity range varies between 1.572.51 for the cir-
cular cylinder, 1.502.47 for the elliptical, 1.622.17 for
the square and 1.382.67 for the triangular shaped cylinder
respectively. So, for the triangular shaped cylinder the
range of spectral slope value in the scaling range is broader
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1008 Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017

Table 3 Multi-scale properties of bed elevation time series at

selected locations
Case Transducer Spectral Spectral scaling
no. slope range (min)

Circular cylinder 6 1.59 342

7 1.89 542
8 1.91 848
9 1.93 848
10 1.57 448
11 1.87 442
13 2.51 428
14 2.11 733
Elliptical cylinder 6 1.61 342
7 1.86 542
8 1.86 533
9 2.01 637
10 1.50 448
11 1.79 442
13 2.47 428
14 2.18 728
Square cylinder 6 1.84 542
7 1.85 542
8 1.85 442
9 2.14 833
10 1.62 648
11 2.09 733
13 2.17 937
14 1.89 356
Triangular cylinder 6 1.89 442
7 1.96 442
8 1.84 433
9 1.56 328
10 1.38 448 Fig. 11 Wavelet power spectral density of the bed elevations at
11 1.98 542 different selected transducer locations for all four cases: circular
(black filled diamond symbols), elliptical (red open circle symbols),
13 2.60 628
square (green triangle symbols) and triangular (blue times symbols)
14 2.67 728

than other three. On an average, spectral scaling range is
observed within the scales of 348 min except the square
cylinder for which it lies in between 3 and 56 min.
Interestingly, for all the cases, smallest spectral slopes
were found at Tr-10 location and it showed the maximum
loglog linear range except at Tr-14 (where the scaling
range was the broadest, 3 min to 56 min) for the square
cylinder case. This clearly indicated the least affected
location till a long time of the start of experiment i.e.,
overall movement of the bed forms was slower in these
locations. Again, minimum loglog liner range were
found at the positions, where highest spectral slopes were
detected clearly as overall faster movement of the largest
bed forms. Generally, Tr-13 and Tr-14 showed higher
spectral slope values where the bed slopes gradually
became positive and eventually maximum deposition took
place, except the square cylinder case, which showed
relatively higher slopes at Tr-9, Tr-11 and Tr-13. Simi-
larly to the observation of Singh et al. (2011), the wavelet
spectrum did not always saturate at low frequencies, for
example, at the location of Tr-6, Tr-7, Tr-10 for all the
cases. This was the indicative of the presence of very
large scales perceived as non-stationariness in the limited
length of the signal. The complex three-dimensional nat-
ure of sand bed forms due to different shaped obstacles
was thus clearly responsible for the different range of
spectral slopes.

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
3.2 Turbulent flow characteristics
3.2.1 Near-bed velocity over stable deformed beds
In turbulent flow, the instantaneous velocity components (u,
v, w) in the Cartesian coordinate system (x, y, z) are given by,
u U u0 ; v V v0 ; w W w0 ; 8 respectively. It is readily observed that the magnitude of suv
where U, V, W are the time-averaged velocities in (x, y, z)-
directions; u0 , v0 , w0 are the fluctuating components. Time-
averaged stream-wise (U), transverse (V), and wall-normal
(W) velocity components are defined as,
1X n
1X n
1X n
U ui ; V vi ; W wi 9
n i1 n i1 n i1
where n is the total number of velocity observations.
The near-bed ADV velocity data were filtered to remove
noises using the phase-space threshold de-spiking method
described by Goring and Nikora (2002) at all locations of the
transducers. At least 90 % of the raw data remained after using
the de-spiking method. Excluded signals were replaced using
a cubic polynomial interpolation. The stable bed elevation
contour plots of different shaped cylinders are presented in
Fig. 12a1a4 and the corresponding contour plots of time
averaged near-bed velocity components U, V and W are
shown in Fig. 12b1b4, c1c4 and d1d4 respectively. It can
be seen that within the scoured region at the cylinder upstream
with negative bed slopes, small and negative longitudinal
velocity U occurred. At Tr-11, it was minimum for triangular
cylinder and maximum for circular cylinder. The magnitude
of U gradually became greater positive at the cylinder
downstream as the bed slope increased eventually as the
sediment was deposited on the bed (Termini and Sammartano
2012). The transverse velocity V possessed its maximum
values at just downstream scoured region for circular and
elliptical cylinders, between which circular cylinder showed
higher V velocity. For the triangular cylinder positive V [ 0
velocity occurred mostly at the left side of cylinder center and
negative V \ 0 velocity occurred at the right side of cylinder
center. The negative V velocity was observed at the upstream
of the cylinders for all cases. The vertical velocity W was
observed to be maximum at downstream of all the cylinders
but the square one, especially where the bed gradually became
positively sloped and finally the largest sediment deposition
was occurred. Accordingly largest W velocity occurred for the
triangular cylinder. Negative W velocity occurred at the
downstream scoured region of the square cylinder.
3.2.2 Near-bed Reynolds shear stresses
The time averaged near-bed local Reynolds shear stress compo-
nents along three different planes (xy, yz and xz) are determined by
1009
suv qu0 v0 ; svw qv0 w0 ; suw qu0 w0 10
The stable bed elevation contour plots of different shaped
cylinders are presented in Fig. 13a1a4 and the corre-
sponding contour plots of time averaged Reynolds shear
stress components suv, svw, and suv along three different
planes are shown in Fig. 13b1b4, c1c4, and d1d4
was maximum, distributed along two sides of a cylinder.
Interestingly for all the cases, greater positive values of suv
were observed at right side just downstream (Tr-17, Tr-18)
adjacent to the cylinders and greater negative values of suv
were observed at left side (Tr-7) of the cylinder bases. This
phenomenon was most prominent for square cylinder case.
This can be explained looking at the bed slope directions at
those locations. Velocity streaks, which moved along the
right side of the cylinder base, changed the flow direction
towards the left wall just downstream of the cylinder due to
negative bed slope and resulted the higher magnitude of
suv. Similarly, reverse phenomena occurred from the left
side of the cylinder base, resulting higher negative values
of suv. Dependence on transverse direction slope was
similarly showed its impact on suv at upstream of the cyl-
inders. For svw component, due to flow reversal and the
dominance of the secondary current, negative shear stress
was observed at the just downstream (Izadinia et al. 2013)
and around right side of cylinder base for circular and
elliptical cases and adjacent to the cylinder downstream of
square and triangular cylinders, indicating outward flux of
momentum. Whereas, positive svw was observed at the
upstream (Izadinia et al. 2013) and around the left side of
the cylinder base, indicating inward flux of momentum.
Again, at the upstream maximum scour region, greater
shear stress values were witnessed for this svw component.
However, for the suv component, negative shear stress was
observed upstream of all cylinders due to the return flow
(Izadinia et al. 2013) and the maximum magnitude of suv
among the four cases was detected for the square cylinder
case. Again, just downstream (Tr-13) of the square cylin-
der, significant negative shear stress was detected which
possessed maximum suv magnitude, whereas for other three
cylinders, very small positive suv were observed at this
location.
Exceedance probabilities for the positive tail of instanta-
neous Reynolds shear stresses at three different planes are
plotted in Fig. 14a1a5, b1b5, c1c5 and d1d5 for circular,
elliptical, square and triangular shaped cylinders respectively
for selected transducer locations Tr-1, Tr-7, Tr-11, Tr-13 and
Tr-14. These plots estimated the probability that a certain
instantaneous Reynolds shear stress value was exceeded
during the 3 min of velocity measurement at certain location.
For all the cases at all locations, the exceedance probability of
suv was the highest among the three with highest tails at Tr-13
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1010 Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017

Fig. 12 Contour plots of stable bed elevations for all four cylinder cases are shown in (a1a4). Mean near-bed longitudinal (U), transverse (V),
and vertical (W) velocity contour plots for all four cylinder shapes are shown in (b1b4), (c1c4) and (d1d4) respectively

Fig. 13 Contour plots of stable bed elevations for all four cases are shown in (a1a4). Contour plots of near-bed Reynolds shear stress
components suv, svw and suv for all four cylinder shapes are shown in (b1b4), (c1c4) and (d1d4) respectively

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017
Fig. 14 Exceedance
probabilities for the positive tail
of instantaneous Reynolds shear
stresses at three planes (suv with
dashed lines, svw with dotted
lines, and suv with solid lines)
for all four cylinder cases:
circular (a1a5), elliptical (b1
b5), square (c1c5) and
triangular (d1d5) respectively
for five selected locations Tr-1,
Tr-7, Tr-11, Tr-13 and Tr-14
location for all the cases except the triangular cylinder, for
which it occurs at Tr-11. Interesting flip-flops were seen
between the exceedance probabilities of other two shear
stresses, svw and suv for the circular and elliptical shaped
cylinders. At the side of the cylinders at the location of Tr-7,
the exceedance probability of svw surpassed that of suv. A
similar phenomenon was also noticed just upstream of the
cylinder at Tr-11, only some portions of the profiles over-
lapped with each other. However, downstream of the cylinder
at Tr-13, the exceedance probability of suv went beyond that of
svw for lower instantaneous shear stress values. Considering
further downstream location Tr-14, the exceedance proba-
bility of suv always outshines that of svw. Except the furthest
measured downstream location Tr-14, the exceedance prob-
ability of suv was smaller than that of svw for the square cyl-
inder case. However, interestingly for triangular shaped
cylinder, at the two sidewise locations Tr-7 and Tr-1, the
exceedance probabilities of suv were greater than that of svw.
3.2.3 Quadrant analysis of Reynolds shear stress
The turbulence over the deformed bed structures around
the cylinders was examined through quadrant analysis to
estimate the major turbulent events characterizing the
1011
coherent structures (Lu and Willmarth 1973; Nakagawa
and Nezu 1981; Wu and Christensen 2006; Mazumder
et al. 2009). This study considers the Reynolds shear stress
suv qu0 v0 along xy-plane, because suv is the most
prominent near-bed shear stress over the scoured surface
generated by three different cylinder diameters, which can
be observed from the exceedance probability (Fig. 14).
Quadrant analysis was originally devised to sort out the
contributions to s from each quadrant of instantaneous
values on the u0 v0 -plane. The quadrants are usually referred
by the following names: (a) outward interactions (i 1;
u0 [ 0, v0 [ 0), Quadrant-1 (Q1), (b) ejections (i 2;
u0 \0, v0 [ 0), Quadrant-2 (Q2), (c) inward interactions
(i 3; u0 \0, v0 \0), Quadrant-3 (Q3) and (d) sweeps
(i 4; u0 [ 0, v0 \0), Quadrant-4 (Q4).
Each velocity pair from the ADV data may be investi-
gated either through examining the entire signal data or
filtering those data above a threshold value (i.e., excluding
a Hyperbolic region of size H) defined as,
H ju0 v0 j=ru rv 11
where ru and rv are the root-mean-square velocities of u
and v signals respectively. At any point in a turbulent flow,
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1012 Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017

the contribution to the total Reynolds shear stress from higher H-values. Comparatively smaller occurrence of
quadrant i excluding the region H is defined as, probability of Q4 events can be seen for the elliptical
Z cylinder than other cylinders.
1 n 0
hu0 v0 ii;H lim u tv0 tIi;H u0 ; v0 dt 12 In the downstream scoured location (Tr-13), where the
n!1 n 0
scour-depth for the elliptical cylinder was lowest than the
where n is the total number of measurements, the angle other cases and bed was negatively sloped, near the bed,
brackets h i denote a conditional average and the indicator ejections (Q2) were the mostly occurring events (Izadinia
function Ii;H is defined as, et al. 2013). The prevailing ejection (Q2) events cause the
8 suspension of sediment particles in the flow (Termini and
< 1; if u0 ; v0 is in ith quadrant and
Sammartano 2012). However, for other cylinders, occur-
Ii;H u0 ; v0 if ju0 v0 j  Hru rv 13
: rence of probability of ejections (Q2) was exceeded by the
0; otherwise
sweep (Q4) events, especially considering higher H-values,
Here, H is the threshold parameter in the Reynolds stress where the bed was positively sloped (Termini and Samm-
signals by which one can extract the values of u0 v0 from the artano 2012) in contrary to the elliptical case. It is note-
whole set of signal data, which are greater than H times worthy that the sum of the occurrence of probability of Q2
ru rv value. In Eq. 13, the expression ju0 v0 j  Hru rv is used and Q4 events in the downstream was much greater than
as a filter which cancels out all those data whose strength is that in the upstream of the cylinder irrespective of shapes.
less than H times ru rv . The other two events, outward (Q1) and inward interac-
The space fraction or occurrence probability of each of tions (Q3) possessed nearly the same occurrence proba-
the quadrant events is computed (Lu and Willmarth 1973; bilities for all four cases. So, in another word, these two
Wu and Christensen 2006; Izadinia et al. 2013), which events contributed significantly to balance the sediment
gives the fraction of total observations (n) contributing to entrainment and deposition in a water channel by giving off
the instantaneous Reynolds shear stress by each of the its space for occurrence of ejections and sweeps (Cellino
quadrant events for a given H, using and Lemmin 2004; Izadinia et al. 2013).
P At further downstream location (Tr-14), ejections (Q2)
Ii;H
Ni;H u0 ; v0 14 were the mostly occurring events for circular, elliptical and
n square cylinders, with maximum value for the square cyl-
where Ii;H is the indicator function (Eq. 13). inder case for which scour-depth was maximum at Tr-14.
The space fractions Ni;H occupied by all four quadrants However, for the triangular cylinder comparatively much
(i = 14) for H ranging from 0 to 5 are shown in Fig. 15 higher bed elevation, with increase in H-value occurrence
(ad) for all different four cylinders respectively. The probability of inward interactions (Q3) outshines that of
occurrence probability, Ni;H plots at Tr-1 near the bed ejection (Q2) events. It can be established from the
showed that sum of the occurrence probabilities of outward aforementioned that sweeping (Q4) or ejection (Q2) events
(Q1) and inward (Q3) interactions were higher for than that developed especially up- and downstream of the cylinder
of other two events for circular and elliptic cylinders; irrespective of cylinder shapes near the bed within the
whereas, for square cylinder their proportions were almost scour hole, where the bed gradients changed its sign (Bey
equal with largest occurrence probabilities for inward et al. 2007; Termini and Sammartano 2012). However, it
interaction (Q3) events. However, for the triangular cyl- was strongly dependent on the magnitude of scour-depth
inder, the occurrence probabilities of sweeping (Q4) and and bed slopes generated due to different cylinder shapes.
inward interactions (Q3) became most significant than the The stress fraction (Lu and Willmarth 1973) by ith
other two quadrant event with increase of hole size (H). quadrant is defined as,
Interestingly, at sides of the cylinders (Tr-7), inward hu0 v0 ii;H
interaction events (Q3) showed highest occurrence proba- Si;H 15
u0 v 0
bility than the others. However, for the elliptical cylinder,
occurrence of outward interactions (Q1) was greater than which gives the Reynolds shear stress fraction associated
that for other cylinders for which the rate of scour at Tr-7 with each of the turbulent events. By definition, for H 0,
was faster than that in cylinder upstream (Tr-11). In the S1;0 S2;0 S3;0 S4;0 1.
upstream scour hole (Tr-11) near the bed, occurrence of Figure 16ad depicts the contribution of all four quad-
probabilities were higher for outward interactions (Q1) and rant events to the Reynolds shear stress suv, i.e. stress
sweeps (Q4) for the circular cylinder. However, for other fraction jSi;H j given by Eq. (15) to four quadrants
three cylinders, sweeping (Q4) events fully outshines the (i 14) for threshold parameter H ranging from 0 to 10
occurrence of other events in the near-bed scour hole for all four cylinder shapes, i.e. circular, elliptical, square
(Termini and Sammartano 2012), especially considering and triangular respectively at five selected transducer

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017 1013

Fig. 15 Stress fraction Ni;H (in

%) for each quadrant for H
ranging from 0 to 5 for all four
cases: a circular, b elliptical,
c square and d triangular at five
selected locations: Tr-1 (with
dotted lines), Tr-7 (with thick
continuous lines), Tr-11 (with
thick dashed lines), Tr-13 (with
thick dash-dotted lines) and Tr-
14 (with thin continuous lines)

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1014 Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017

Fig. 16 Stress fraction jSi;H j for

each quadrant for H ranging
from 0 to 10 for all four cases: a
circular, b elliptical, c square
and d triangular at five selected
locations: Tr-1 (with dotted
lines), Tr-7 (with thick
continuous lines), Tr-11 (with
thick dashed lines), Tr-13 (with
thick dash-dotted lines) and Tr-
14 (with thin continuous lines)

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Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2015) 29:9951017 1015

locations Tr-1, Tr-7, Tr-11, Tr-13 and Tr-14. Extensive obstacles was described. Development of bed forms around
influence of cylinder shapes and spatial locations on stress the sand embedded piers along different longitudinal and
fractions of an individual turbulent event can be readily transverse arrays of transducers was presented with asso-
seen from the plots. ciated turbulent flow properties. Several conclusions can be
In the upstream scour of the cylinder (at location Tr-11), drawn from the present research:
outward interaction event (Q1) and sweeping event (Q4)
At initial stage of bed deformation, scouring from the
contribute equally to the Reynolds shear stress for circular
upstream base surface and deposition on the down-
cylinder up to H  4. For H [ 4, sweeping event (Q4)
stream along the centerline were observed to happen
surpasses the contribution of Q1 event for this case.
fastest for the elliptical cylinder case. Interestingly, for
Interestingly for elliptical cylinder, all the four quadrant
the square cylinder largest sediment accumulations
events contribute equally to the suv at location Tr-11 till
occurred at the two sides about the centerline.
H  2, and beyond this value of H, sweeping event (Q4)
Scour radius in both stream-wise and transverse direc-
contributes mostly to the Reynolds shear stress. However,
tions were maximum for the circular cylinder and
for all H-values, Q4 event is mostly commanding for the
minimum for the triangular and square shaped cylinders
triangular cylinder. Sweeping event is responsible for
for stream-wise and transverse directions respectively.
entrainment of sediment particles and causes movement of
Upstream scour depth was maximum for the circular
sand particles by rolling, sliding and saltation in this
cylinder case and minimum for the elliptical cylinder which
region. For the square cylinder case, sweeping event is
is approximately 68 % of that for the circular cylinder.
mostly prevailing up to H  6, beyond which, inward
Maximum deposition region was observed for the triangu-
interaction event (Q1) surpasses the contribution of Q4 to
lar cylinder case with a sediment mound of 8.4 cm high.
the Reynolds shear stress. These findings are in contrary to
Rate of scouring events at the side of cylinder (Tr-7)
the result of Izadinia et al. (2013) and strongly depicts the
was significant for the elliptical cylinder. Whereas, for
effect if shape of the scour hole and the eddies generated
other three cases, major occurred at the cylinder
near bed upstream of different shaped cylinders.
upstream location (Tr-11).
For circular and elliptical cylinders, ejection (Q2) and
On an average, loglog linearity in bed elevation spectra
sweep (Q4) are the two equally dominating events in
observed in all the cases except the triangular cylinder
downstream scour (location Tr-13) of the cylinder till H  8
possessed spectral slopes in the range of 1.911.93.
and H  2 respectively. For H [ 2, ejection event (Q2)
However, for the triangular cylinder mean spectral slope
surpasses the contribution of Q4. Interestingly, for both
was slightly higher with the value of 1.99. The spectral
square and triangular shaped cylinders, at the location Tr-13,
scaling range was observed within the scales of 348 min
all the four quadrant events are almost contribute equally to
for all the cases except the square cylinder, for which it
the suv up to H  1. Above this H-value, sweeping events
lied in between 3 and 56 min.
(Q4) are mostly dominant for both the cases. These findings
The bed elevation spectra for all cases in downstream
are in accordance with Izadinia et al. (2013). Interestingly, at
scour and deposition region showed comparatively
the location Tr-7 inward interaction event (Q3) contributes
higher spectral slopes, where positive bed slopes were
mostly to the Reynolds shear stress for all the four cylinders.
generated, except the square cylinder case.
At further downstream location, i.e. Tr-14, ejection (Q2) is
Over the deformed bed for all the cylinders, it can be
the mostly contributing event to the suv for circular and
readily observed that the magnitude of suv was maxi-
elliptical cylinders and also for square cylinder for all H-
mum. Interestingly for all the cases, positive value of suv
values. Thus, the sediment becomes suspended in this region.
was observed at right side just downstream adjacent to
However, for the triangular cylinder, outward (Q1) and
the cylinders and negative value of suv was observed at
inward interactions (Q3) dominantly contribute higher than
left side of the cylinder bases. This phenomenon was
the other two events to the Reynolds shear stress for all H-
most prominent for square cylinder case.
values. Thus, in this region the flow did not have enough
For the suv component, slightly negative Reynolds shear
energy to transport particles and thus leads to sedimentation.
stress was observed upstream of all cylinders due to the
return flow and the maximum magnitude of this was
detected for the square cylinder case. Again, just
4 Conclusions downstream (Tr-13) of the square cylinder, significant
negative shear stress was detected which possessed
A new experimental technique for high-resolution mea- maximum suv magnitude, which was also greater than the
surement of spatiotemporal bed form developments around magnitudes of suv in upstream scoured region (Tr-11) of
submerged circular and non-circular cylindrical pier-like all cases.

123
1016
In the upstream scour hole, near the bed, occurrence
probability are higher for sweeping events with mini-
mum occurrence measure for the elliptical cylinder case,
which possessed comparatively smaller bed slopes than
the others. Whereas, in the downstream scoured location
of the elliptical cylinder, where the bed was negatively
sloped, ejections were the mostly occurring events near
the bed region. However, for the other three cylinders
with positive bed slopes, sweeping events were the major
occurring events in near bed region.
In the upstream scour (Tr-11) of circular, elliptical and
triangular cylinders, sweeping event (Q4) was mostly
dominant considering higher H-values. Whereas,
inward interaction event (Q1) was contributing mostly
to the Reynolds shear stress suv for the square cylinder
case considering H [ 6.
It was established that sweeping or ejection events develop
especially with the up- and downstream scour region of the
cylinder qualitatively irrespective of shapes, where the bed
gradients change its sign. However, quantitatively strongly
dependent on the deepness of scour and bed slopes
generated due to different cylinder shapes.
The present study would be helpful for the civil and
mechanical engineers in purpose to modify various pier-
like submerged hydraulic system designs such as cylin-
drical breakwaters used for coastal protection, a caisson
placed underwater around the pier bottom for scour pro-
tection, an unfinished bridge pier construction during pos-
sible high-flood situation and can prevent undesired falling/
breakage due to scouring with associated turbulence. Also
our information can be utilized as a database for testing
numerically turbulence modelling of sedimentation process
around submerged cylindrical bridge pier-like objects. As
erosion changes the morphology of the river/sea bed and
affects aquatic ecosystems and fish habitats quite sensi-
tively, this investigation on the hydrodynamics of turbulent
flow structure over scoured bed around such submerged
hydraulic constructions contributes to the field of envi-
ronmental fluid dynamics.
Acknowledgments Authors express their sincere thanks to the
Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi for
approving the Project (No. SERB/S4/ES-127/2004) with a financial
support to conduct this experimental research work at Indian Statis-
tical Institute, Kolkata.
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