PREDICTING MEANDER MIGRATION: EVALUATION OF SOME EXISTING TECHNIQUES

River meanders migrate over time; this migration endangers civil engineering structures in general and highway bridges in particular. Predicting and preventing this migration is part of the responsibility of the hydraulic engineer and of the geotechnical engineer working together. This article describes and evaluates two approaches used to predict the migration of meanders: the empirical approach and the time-sequence maps and extrapolation approach. Empirical methods are based on correlations using data bases of observed behavior, while the time-sequence method uses previously observed movement of a given meander to predict its future migration. Six case histories on four rivers are used to evaluate the precision and accuracy of these methods by comparing the predicted and measured migration. The results show that some empirical methods are conservative, some are unconservative, and none of them are very accurate or precise. The time sequence method gives more information on the meander movement, is relatively precise and accurate to predict the radius of the best-fit circle of the future meander location, but is not precise to predict the migration rate of the center of that circle.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • The proceedings are available on CD-ROM.
• Corporate Authors:

  Texas Transportation Institute

  Texas A&M University System, 1600 E Lamar Boulevard
  Arlington, TX  United States  76011
• Authors:
  • Briaud, J-L
  • Chen, H-C
  • Park, S J
• Conference:
  • First International Conference on Scour of Foundations
  • Location: College Station, Texas
  • Date: 2002-11-17 to 2002-11-20
• Publication Date: 2002

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 1061-80

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accuracy; Case studies; Empirical methods; Highway bridges; Mathematical prediction; Meanders; Precision; Safety
• Uncontrolled Terms: Meander migration; Time sequence methods
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Data and Information Technology; Design; Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology; Safety and Human Factors; I24: Design of Bridges and Retaining Walls;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00977082
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 9 2004 12:00AM