Bridge's Scour Monitoring System

The scour of pier in riverbed is one of the major causes for bridge failure. The riverbed around the pier footing can be eroded in scouring event. Erosion of soil around the bridge foundation could lead to problems from instability of substructure to complete bridge failures. An effective scour risk countermeasure is to deploy bridge scour monitoring system. It is difficult to measurement and monitor the depth variation of scouring at piers, especially during flood event. In this paper, a bridge's scour monitoring system is proposed. It is integrated with RFID, Wireless Charging and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. The prototype system was installed in field and successful work in 2010. It demonstrates the adoptability and potential of this system.