Stochastic Assessment of Scour Hazard

Scour is the most frequent cause of bridge collapses in Mexico. Bridges located along the Mexican Pacific coast are exposed to extreme rainfall originating from tropical storms and hurricanes. Such environmental phenomena trigger sediment loss, which is known as scour. If maintenance actions are not taken after scouring events, the scour depth increases over time until the bridge collapses. A methodology to estimate the scour hazard considering both the scour–fill interaction and the Monte Carlo simulation method is proposed. The general extreme value probability distribution is used to characterize the intensity of the scouring events, the lognormal distribution is used to characterize the sedimentation process (fill), and a homogeneous Poisson process is used to forecast the occurrence of both types of events. Based on the above, several histories of scour–fill depths are made; such simulations are then used to develop time-dependent scour hazard curves. Different hazard curves associated with different time intervals are estimated for a bridge located in Oaxaca, Mexico.