A review on recent development of numerical modelling of local scour around hydraulic and marine structures

This paper reviews the recent development of numerical modelling of local scour around hydraulic and marine structures. The numerical models for simulating local scour are classified into five categories: sediment transport rate models, two-phase models, CFD-DEM models, equilibrium scour models and depth-averaged models. The sediment transport rate models are the most popularly used models because of their high calculation speed and availability of empirical formulae for predicting sediment transport rates. Two-phase models were developed to simulate sediment transport in the format of sheet flow under strong current velocity or strong turbulence. The CFDDEM model simulates the motion of every individual sediment particle. Its speed is the slowest, but it provides the opportunity to understand fundamental mechanisms of flow–particle interaction and particle–particle interaction using small-scale simulations. Equilibrium scour models predict the final scour profile at the equilibrium stage but cannot predict scour history. The depth-averaged models that were developed early are not recommended for local scour problems because they are not able to predict three-dimensional features around structures. Although many numerical models have been developed and many studies have been conducted to investigate local scour, some challenging problems remain to be solved, for example, the effects from scaling and sediment gradation. In addition, people’s understanding of local scour of cohesive sand is still very shallow, and more experimental and numerical research in this area is needed.