ABSTRACT
Bridges are important lifelines linking communities and their collapse due to flood events can result in severe social and economic impacts for communities. Estimation of maximum bridge scour depth is important for determining effective mitigation and adaptation procedures. HEC-18 is a well-established methodology to calculate scour depth. However, it is also often reported to yield conservative estimates of maximum scour depth in various publications. This paper presents a simple sensitivity study to assess the key inputs that affect the computation of maximum scour depth using the HEC-18 framework. The parameter ranges used in this analysis are sourced from an openly accessible database from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). In this study, HEC-18 is assessed against field measurements. The primary aim of this research is to study the impact of each key input parameter on HEC-18 estimates of maximum scour depth estimates.
