Scouring of bridge foundation is one of the major cause of bridge failure. Scour can be defined as the excavation of foundation or other material from the bed and banks of streams, due to water flow. Scour monitoring is one of the major requirements to ensure bridge safety. There are some underwater instruments such as float-out devices which are used in scour monitoring. The available conventional underwater instruments are expensive and difficulties in maintenance. Thus vibration based monitoring techniques are emerging, this paper is one of such effort. This paper develops a vibration-based scour monitoring technique. The effect of sour on the vibration characteristics of pier is not significant at the early stages of scouring but significant changes in vibration characteristic can be identified during moderate level of scour. Thus this method can be used to identify and alert the safety of bridge prior its failure. An Extended Kalman filter is employed in this process. This paper numerically validates the monitoring capability of developed method over other vibrations based methods.

Scouring of bridge foundation is one of the major cause of bridge failure. Scour can be defined as the excavation of foundation or other material from the bed and banks of streams, due to water flow. Scour monitoring is one of the major requirements to ensure bridge safety. There are some underwater instruments such as float-out devices which are used in scour monitoring. The available conventional underwater instruments are expensive and difficulties in maintenance. Thus vibration based monitoring techniques are emerging, this paper is one of such effort. This paper develops a vibration-based scour monitoring technique. The effect of sour on the vibration characteristics of pier is not significant at the early stages of scouring but significant changes in vibration characteristic can be identified during moderate level of scour. Thus this method can be used to identify and alert the safety of bridge prior its failure. An unscented Kalman filter is employed in this process. This paper numerically validates the monitoring capability of developed method over other vibrations based methods.