New Sensor for Scour Assessment

Scour is the erosion of soil around a structure due to flow of water around it. This is responsible for many critical failures of structures like bridges. Scour has been linked to approximately 60 percent of the bridge failures in the United States, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

As such information about scour will help the engineers to take necessary steps to reduce the effects of scour.

A new sensor, called in situ Scour Evaluation Probe (ISEP) has been developed by engineers of North Carolina State University which can assess the scour potential of soils at various depths.   “The ISEP’s ability to measure scour potential at different depths helps to predict how the soil will behave in the future as a support media, as various layers of soil are eroded or scoured,”  says Dr. Mo Gabr, a professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC  State University.
The ISEP will also allow end-users  to perform scour assessment more frequently because they will not have to take physical samples to a lab for analysis.
Reference: “In Situ measurement of the scour potential of non-cohesive sediments (ISEP)”, Cary Caruso, Mohammed Gabr, North Carolina State University,Presented on: Nov. 8, 5th International Conference on Scour and Erosion in San Francisco, Calif.