ABSTRACT
Local scour induced by the wash of ships’ propellers produces severe damages to streambeds and quay structures. Understanding of the process is thus required for the design of suitable protection. A prerequisite for the study of the scouring action is the characterization of the velocity field induced by the propeller jet. This study reports on new experimental data regarding the scour geometry and the time-averaged velocity field induced by the propeller of an inland-vessel model. The new data serve to identify links between the velocity field of the jet and the development of the scour over time, as well as to assess the performance of existing criteria to estimate the velocities near the propeller plane and near the bed level. Results suggest that simple relations serve to accurately describe the mean flow characteristics of the propeller jet, and are thus suitable to define the jet action in scour forecasting models.
