SCOUR MONITORING OF RAILWAY BRIDGE PIERS VIA INCLINATION DETECTION

Protection of bridge piers against scour is a crucial requisite for safe train locomotion. It is necessary to issue an alert to block the bridge when its piers are endangered by scour. As it is difficult for a human inspector to observe the bridge pier scouring during a flood directly by naked eyes, the authors developed the clinometric type of scour monitoring device. These devices have been installed since 2000 in East Japan Railway company area. This device gives the alarm to the train operation room and train operation is suspended, when the inclination of the bridge pier exceeds the threshold value. Moreover, the authors developed numeric models for inclination forecast to detect the inclination of a pier before it is in a critical condition due to scour.