JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

Sand mining from rivers is one of the biggest concerns in the science today. Certain principles and rules for choosing the right place for mining materials and the amount of this mining are missing in the design codes. Therefore, mining of river materials from sites with less potential and near structures has been occasionally seen. In the present study, it has been attempted to reinforce the structure to control the impact of the mining of material, which results in the increased scour by changing the flow pattern around the structure. The experiments were carried out in two simple and armed modes, in sand bed with a grain size of 0.78 mm, with a length of 4.25 meters, inside a canal of 13 meters in length and 1.2 meters in width. The extent of scouring along the longitudinal and transverse directions in different times from the start to the scouring equilibrium was investigated for all substrates under sub-critical flow conditions (range 0.5-0.25). The results showed that the use of a cable-protected method in the upstream pit led to 29.6% reduction in the maximum scour depth at the front and 34% reduction in the back of the pier; also, in the downstream of the pit, it reduced the maximum scour depth by 15% at the front of the pier. Therefore, the cable arrangement used at the piers surface, according to the current research method, resulted in a significant reduction in the depth and extent of scouring in the pier group of the bridge.

Inclined drop is one of the supercritical flow producers used in open channels to reduce slope and elevation of the ground. Given that the application of horizontal and vertical screen in the downstream of this drop as an energy dissipater can be effective in the n energy dissipation of flow, in the present study, 180 different experiments were performed to investigate the energy dissipation of flow. The results showed that the angle of the drop had no marginal impact on energy dissipation and the relative depth of downstream of inclined drop equipped with a vertical screen, but increasing the porosity of screen caused enhancement in both parameters. Also, for the inclined drop equipped with a horizontal screen, by increasing angle and decreasing the porosity of screen, the energy dissipation and relative depth of downstream were raised. Also, for inclined drop equipped with a horizontal screen, by increasing the angle and decreasing the porosity of screen, the energy dissipation and relative depth of downstream were enhanced. For a constant relative critical depth, the relative depth of downstream and the energy dissipation of the inclined drop equipped with a horizontal screen considered the function of the wetted length of screen and length of the drop. For vertical screen, it is only a function of screen porosity.

The scour around the bridge piers is one of the main causes of bridge failure and the extraction of aggregates may aggravate this phenomenon. The present study comprehensively investigated the scour around the groups of bridge piers in the presence of aggregate extraction pits, using different discharges. The bridge piers roughened by gravel had been compared with the simple bridge piers; so, the results showed that the roughening caused the reduction of the scour depth. Scour depth change rate led to an increase in the equilibrium time. The results also showed that the reduction of the scour depth at the downstream groups of piers was more than that in the upstream. For the lowest discharge, the aggregate extraction pits had a considerable effect on the scour depth difference for the groups of piers in the downstream and upstream. On the other hand, the effects were decreased when the rate of discharge was increased. The experimental results obtained by the rough surface models showed that as the discharge was increased, the local scour was increased too; at the same time, the bed profile was posed at the low level. Generally, the scour depth of the groups of piers in the downstream of the extraction pit was more than that in the upstream. The results of the current research, therefore, demonstrated that the surface of the bridge pier roughened by gravel reduced the scour depth.

Unpredictable settlement of earth dams has led researchers to develop new methods such as artificial neural networks, wavelet theory, fuzzy logic, and a combination of them. These methods do not require time-consuming analyses for estimation. In this research, the amount of settlement in rockfill dams with a central core has been estimated using artificial intelligence methods. The data of 35 rockfill dams with a central core were used to train and validate the models. The artificial neural network, wavelet transform model, and fuzzy-neural adaptive inference system are the proposed models which were used in the present study. According to the results, the best model for an artificial neural network had two hidden layers, the first layer of 18 neurons and the second layer of 7 neurons, with the Tansig-Tansig activation function, with a coefficient of determination R2=0.4969. The best model for the fuzzy-neural inference system had the ring function (Dsigmoid) as a membership function, with three membership functions and 142 repetitions with a coefficient of determination R2=0.2860. Also, combining wavelet-neural network conversion with the coif2 wavelet function due to the more adaptation this function has to the input variables, the better the performance, and this function, with a coefficient of determination R2=0.9447, had the highest accuracy compared to other models.

In the last decade, the use of gabion structures in hydraulic engineering for stabilizing the structure due to its high density and weight has become widespread. Also, the material's roughness and porosity cause it to be used in energy dissipation and drainage projects. This study evaluates the relative energy dissipation of gabion structures downstream of the ogee spillway in the conditions of a submerged hydraulic jump. The evaluated parameters in this study were Froude number, gabion height, gabion thickness, and material diameter. The experiments were performed with three average diameters of 1.5, 2.2, and 3 cm for rock material, three gabion heights of 10 and 20 cm, and Max. The end sill heights were 10, 20, and 30 cm. The operated discharges were regulated from 20 to 40 l/s. The results showed that by decreasing the average diameter of gabion aggregates, the amount of relative energy dissipation increases in all tested models, so that in gabion with a 1.5 cm average diameter of aggregates, the amount of energy dissipation increased by 3.6% in comparison with using the diameter of 3cm for the average diameter of the material. Increasing the height of the gabion to the extent that the flow is entirely inward can have up to 33% more relative energy dissipation than the gabion with a height of 10 cm. Also, by increasing the diameter of the gabion from 10 cm to 30 cm, relative energy dissipation increases up to 15%.