Flood Resilience Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Highway Bridges: A Computational Investigation

Abstract

India has much rain throughout the months of June, July, and August. During this time of year, several rivers experience severe flooding. In extreme climatic conditions, the river flood washed the bridges and roads. Hence it is customary to analyze bridges and roads through numerical techniques or simulations. In this context, computational fluid dynamics (C.F.D.) is the most reliable technique and is the core of this chapter. The present study aims to simulate water pressure on a bridge pier and investigate the structural performance through numerical modeling. The present study considers circular and rectangular pier shapes to analyze the water distribution through pressure and velocity fields. The bridge piers of circular shape with a diameter of 0.355m and rectangular shape of similar size have been analyzed and compared. Both piers have the same elevation of 3.5 meters and are exposed to a water velocity rate of 0.5 to 4 meters per second. The performance of both piers has been investigated by varying the water velocity by 0.5 meters per second in magnitude. ANSYS Fluent has been used to study the flood scenario in the present work. It was noticed that the flow field was significantly affected by the circular shape. However, the performance of the rectangular shape was observed to be superior to the circular shape.