Full-Scale Mine Burial Experiments in Wave and Current Environments and Comparison With Models

A mine burial field experiment was carried out on two sandy seafloors between January and April 2004 in the Bay of Brest, France. Burial recording mines (BRMs) were used to measure burial and mine orientation at 15-min intervals. Sonar and bottom photographs were also used to characterize sediment morphology and mine burial. These observations are compared with the predictions of mine burial using the following three models: a momentary liquefaction model, a current-induced scour model, and a wave-induced scour model. Analysis combines mine burial data, sediment data, seabed observations, and hydrodynamic measurements. At the first site, ldquoRascas,rdquo the seabed dynamics are dominated by tides and river runoff. Almost no mine burial was measured during the experiment which is in agreement with predictions of mine burial models (current-induced scour and liquefaction). Dynamics at the second site, ldquoBertheaume,rdquo are driven by tides and ocean waves. A long storm (one week) and several swell events were experienced and significant mine burial was observed in conjunction with high significant waveheights. Mine burial models suggest that burial at ldquoBertheaumerdquo was dominated by wave-induced scour rather than current-induced scour or momentary liquefaction.     

Scour and Burial Mechanics of Objects in the Nearshore

A process-based, numerical, hydrodynamic vortex lattice mine scour/burial model (VORTEX) is presented that simulates scour and burial of objects of arbitrary shape resting on a granular bed in the nearshore. There are two domains in the model formulation: a far-field where burial and exposure occur due to changes in the elevation of the seabed and a near-field involving scour and transport of sediment by the vortices shed from the object. The far-field burial mechanisms are based on changes in the equilibrium bottom profiles in response to seasonal changes in wave climate and accretion/erosion waves spawned by fluxes of sediment into the littoral cell. The near-field domain consists of one grid cell extracted from the far-field that is subdivided into a rectangular lattice of panels having sufficient resolution to define the shape of the object. The vortex field induced by the object is constructed from an assemblage of horseshoe vortices excited by local pressure gradients and shear over the lattice panels. The horseshoe vortices of each lattice panel release a pair of vortex filaments into the neighboring flow. The induced velocity of these trailing vortex filaments causes scour of the neighboring seabed and induces hydrodynamic forces on the object. Scour around the object and its subsequent movement into the scour depression contribute to burial, while far-field changes in local sand level may increase burial depth or expose the object. Scour and burial predictions of mines and mine-like objects were tested in field experiments conducted in the nearshore waters off the Pacific coast of California at Scripps Pier, the Gulf Coast of Florida at Indian Rocks, and off the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts at Martha's Vineyard. Model predictions of mine scour and burial are in reasonable agreement with field measurements and underwater photographs.     

An Acoustic-Instrumented Mine for Studying Subsequent Burial

The U.S. Navy is supporting the research to develop and validate stochastic, time-dependent, mine burial prediction models to aid the tactical decision making process. This research requires continuous monitoring of both mine behavior during burial, and the near-field processes responsible for burial. A new instrumented mine has been developed that far exceeds the capabilities of the earlier optically instrumented mine in terms of the burial processes that can be measured. The acoustic-instrumented mine (AIM) utilizes acoustic transducers to measure burial and scour, localized flow rates, and sediment size and concentration in the water column. The AIM also includes sensors for measuring mine orientation and movement, as well as oceanographic information such as significant waveheights, wave period, and water temperature. Four AIMs were constructed and deployed during the Indian Rocks Beach (IRB, FL) and Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA) mine burial experiments. The results from the field experiments have proven that the sensor suite is viable in providing a wealth of data that are critical in understanding and modeling the complex subsequent burial process.     

Numerical Simulations of the Flow and Sediment Transport Regimes Surrounding a Short Cylinder

The 3-D flow field and bed stress surrounding a short cylinder in response to combined wave and mean-flow forcing events is examined. Model simulations are performed with a 3-D nonhydrostatic computational fluid dynamics model, FLOW-3D. The model is forced with a range of characteristic tidal and wave velocities as observed in 12-15 m of water at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA). The 2.4-m-long and 0.5-m diameter cylinder is buried 10% of the diameter on a flat, fixed bed. Regions of incipient motion are identified through local estimates of the Shields parameter exceeding the critical value. Potential areas of sediment deposition are identified with local estimates of the Rouse parameter exceeding ten. The model predictions of sediment response are in general in agreement with field observations of seabed morphology obtained over a one-week period during the 2003-2004 MVCO mine burial experiment. Both observations and simulations show potential transport occurring at the ends of the mine in wave-dominated events. Mean flows greater than 10 cm/s lead to the formation of larger scour pits upstream of the cylinder. Deposition in both cases tends to occur along the sides, near the center of mass of the mine. However, the fixed-bed assumption prohibits the prediction of full perimeter scour as is observed in nature. Predicted scour and burial regimes for a range of wave and mean-flow combinations are established.     

Mine Burial Observations During the 2003–2004 U.S. Office of Naval Research Experiment

During the 2003-2004 winter season, the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR, Arlington, VA), sponsored a detailed in situ study of the mine burial process resulting from wave-seafloor-mine interaction at Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA). In total, 16 mine shapes were deployed. Six were the Forschungsanstalt der Bundeswehr fur Wasserschall und Geophysik (FWG, Kiel, Germany) burial registration mines using optical sensors, four others were equipped with acoustical sensors, and six were simple shapes. Repeated acoustic surveys and detailed sediment sampling were conducted to characterize the site and the burial status of all objects. This paper focuses on data from three recovered optical systems. The records show three roll events at all three registration mines, which are necessary for scour burial. Two systems experienced a fourth roll event. Results from earlier experiments suggest only three (four) stages of progressively increasing burial despite frequent successive burial and exposure cycles (some as short as 1 h). During these burial-exposure cycles changes of buried mine volume reached up to 80%. The only reasonable explanation is a change of sediment height of up to 40 cm relative to the stably lying mines. This requires new concepts. Cyclic burial changes that were observed simultaneously at different positions cannot be explained with existing models. The least difficult explanation is ldquounderwater sand stormsrdquo which are characterized by a high sediment suspension.     

Predicting Seabed Burial of Cylinders by Wave-Induced Scour: Application to the Sandy Inner Shelf Off Florida and Massachusetts

A simple parameterized model for wave-induced burial of mine-like cylinders as a function of grain-size, time-varying, wave orbital velocity and mine diameter was implemented and assessed against results from inert instrumented mines placed off the Indian Rocks Beach (IRB, FL), and off the Martha's vineyard coastal observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA). The steady flow scour parameters provided by Whitehouse (1998) for self-settling cylinders worked well for predicting burial by depth below the ambient seabed for (0.5 m) diameter mines in fine sand at both sites. By including or excluding scour pit infilling, a range of percent burial by surface area was predicted that was also consistent with observations. Rapid scour pit infilling was often seen at MVCO but never at IRB, suggesting that the environmental presence of fine sediment plays a key role in promoting infilling. Overprediction of mine scour in coarse sand was corrected by assuming a mine within a field of large ripples buries only until it generates no more turbulence than that produced by surrounding bedforms. The feasibility of using a regional wave model to predict mine burial in both hindcast and real-time forecast mode was tested using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, Washington, DC) WaveWatch 3 (WW3) model. Hindcast waves were adequate for useful operational forcing of mine burial predictions, but five-day wave forecasts introduced large errors. This investigation was part of a larger effort to develop simple yet reliable predictions of mine burial suitable for addressing the operational needs of the U.S. Navy.     

A Probabilistic Expert System Approach for Sea Mine Burial Prediction

Knowledge of the extent of burial of bottom sitting sea mines is critical to mine detection due to the significantly degraded capabilities of mine-hunting systems when the mines are buried. To provide an enhanced capability for predicting mine burial in support of U.S. Navy mine countermeasure (MCM) operations, an expert system approach to predicting sea mine burial has been developed. This expert system serves as a means to synthesize previous and current research on sea mine burial due to impact upon deployment and subsequently due to scour, the two dominant burial mechanisms in littoral waters. Prediction systems for impact and scour burial have been implemented as simple Bayesian networks whose probabilistic basis provides means of accounting for the inherent uncertainties associated with mine deployment methods, simplified physics-based burial models, and environmental variability. Examples of burial predictions and comparisons to results from field experiments are illustrated. In addition, a proposed risk metric is developed and applied to provide a geospatial mapping of mine burial probability.     

Measured and Predicted Burial of Cylinders During the Indian Rocks Beach Experiment

Burial of instrumented mine-like cylinders as a result of wave-induced scour was measured during experiments conducted in shallow water (15-16 m) with fine-sand (133-mum) and coarse-sand (566-mum) sediments off Indian rocks beach (IRB), FL. scour pits developed around the instrumented cylinders in the fine-sand site when significant waveheights exceeded 2 m, causing the cylinders to pitch, then roll into the developing scour pits, often changing heading to align parallel with the wave crest. Final cylinder burial was nearly 40 cm (about 70%-80% mine diameter) relative to the sediment-water interface, but only 20%-50% relative to surface area covered. The difference was caused by the lack of complete infilling of scour pits. Little development of scour pits and burial was noted on the coarse-sand site and the cylinders buried to only 20%-40% of the cylinder diameter below the sediment surface. Burial results, although variable, are in general agreement with the wave-induced scour model developed by Trembanis et al. (2007) for the fine sand, but not for the coarse sand where measured burial was much less than predicted.     

Mine Burial Experiments at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory

Several experiments to measure postimpact burial of seafloor mines by scour and fill have been conducted near the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA). The sedimentary environment at MVCO consists of a series of rippled scour depressions (RSDs), which are large scale bedforms with alternating areas of coarse and fine sand. This allows simultaneous mine burial experiments in both coarse and fine sand under almost identical hydrodynamic forcing conditions. Two preliminary sets of mine scour burial experiments were conducted during winters 2001-2002 in fine sand and 2002-2003 in coarse sand with a single optically instrumented mine in the field of view of a rotary sidescan sonar. From October 2003 to April of 2004, ten instrumented mines were deployed along with several sonar systems to image mine behavior and to characterize bedform and oceanographic processes. In fine sand, the sonar imagery of the mines revealed that large scour pits form around the mines during energetic wave events. Mines fell into their own scour pits, aligned with the dominant wave crests and became level with the ambient seafloor after several energetic wave events. In quiescent periods, after the energetic wave events, the scour pits episodically infilled with mud. After several scour and infilling events, the scour pits were completely filled and a layer of fine sand covered both the mines and the scour pits, leaving no visible evidence of the mines. In the coarse sand, mines were observed to bury until the exposed height above the ripple crests was approximately the same as the large wave orbital ripple height (wavelengths of 50-125 cm and heights of 10-20 cm). A hypothesis for the physical mechanism responsible for this partial burial in the presence of large bedforms is that the mines bury until they present roughly the same hydrodynamic roughness as the orbital-scale bedforms present in coarse sand.     

Burial and scour around short cylinder under progressive shoaling waves

The results of a laboratory experimental program aimed at better understanding the scour around and burial of heavy cylindrical objects under oscillating flow on a sandy bed are described. This study was motivated by its application to the dynamics of isolated cobbles/mines on a sandy floor under nonlinear progressive waves, such as that occur in shallow coastal waters beyond the wave-breaking region. In the experiments, nonlinear progressive waves were generated in a long wave tank of rectangular cross-section with a bottom slope. Model mines (short cylinders) were placed on the sandy bottom and the temporal evolution of the bed profile and the velocity field in the near field of the object were observed. Experiments were conducted at relatively high Reynolds numbers for a range of flow conditions, which can be characterized by the Keulegan–Carpenter number and Shields parameter. Depending on the values of these parameters, four different scour regimes around the cylinder including periodical burial of cylinder under migrating sand ripples were observed; they were classified as: (i) no scour/burial, (ii) initial scour, (iii) expanded scour, and (iv) periodic burial cases. A scour regime diagram was developed and the demarcation criteria between different regimes were deduced. Semi-empirical formulae that permit estimation of the scour depth with time, the equilibrium maximum scour depth and length, and conditions necessary for the burial of the cylinder as a function of main external parameters are also proposed.     

Scour and burial mechanics of conical frustums on a sandy bed under combined flow conditions

The scour and burial of conical frustums placed on a sandy bed under waves alone (WA) and combined flows (CF) conditions was investigated. The observations indicate that equilibrium burial depth is smaller than burial of other objects such as short cylinders laying on a sand bed under equivalent hydrodynamic conditions. Truncated cone offers less resistance to the flow field due to its more round shape when compared to a horizontally placed short cylinder characterized by sharp edges. A smaller disruption to the flow field translates to less turbulent intensity and to smaller sediment transport capacity of the flow around the object and less burial. The equilibrium burial depth shows a significantly weaker dependency on the Shields parameter than on the Keulegan-Carpenter number, contrary to the case of finite short cylinders. A new empirical predictor based on the relative strength of the wave to the wave plus current velocity, the Keulegan-Carpenter number, and the Shields parameter is proposed for estimating the equilibrium burial of truncated cones under combined flows. Both the Keulegan-Carpenter number and the Shields parameter determine the width of the scour hole around the cone. The former however, is the most dominant parameter influencing the length of the scour hole.     

Mine-Impact Burial Model (IMPACT35) Verification and Improvement Using Sediment Bearing Factor Method

Recently, a 3-D model (IMPACT35) was developed to predict a falling cylindrical mine's location and orientation in air-water-sediment columns. The model contains the following three components: 1) triple coordinate transform, 2) hydrodynamics of falling rigid object in a single medium (air, water, or sediment) and in multiple media (air-water and water-sediment interfaces), and 3) delta method for sediment resistance with the transient pore pressure. Two mine-impact burial experiments were conducted to detect the mine trajectory in water column [Carderock Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), West Bethesda, MD, on September 10-14, 2001], and to measure the mine burial volume in sediment (Baltic Sea in June 2003). The existing IMPACT35 predicts a mine's location and orientation in the water column, but not in the sediment column. Since sediment resistance largely affects the mine burial depth and orientation in sediment, a new method (bearing factor) is proposed to compute the sediment resistant force and torque. The improvement of IMPACT35 with the bearing factor method is verified using the data collected from the Baltic Sea mine-impact burial experiment. The prediction error satisfies near-Gaussian distribution. The bias of the burial volume (in percent) prediction reduces from 11% using the delta method (old) to 0.1% using the bearing factor method (new). Correspondingly, the root-mean-square error (rmse) reduces from 26.8% to 15.8%.     

中性网格对圆桩局部冲刷的水动力弱化及防护效果分析

针对水下桩墩的局部冲刷问题,提出一种适用范围广、防冲促淤效果显著的防护措施。该防护措施把一种相对密度略大于水、几何特征特殊的中性网格结构完全覆盖在冲刷坑或可能出现冲刷坑的床面上,以减弱冲刷坑内水动力,促进泥沙落淤,达到减轻局部冲刷的目的。通过数值模拟和水槽试验探讨了中性网格结构对圆桩周围冲刷坑内水动力及床面形态的影响,并研究了网孔尺寸对防冲促淤效果的影响规律。结果表明：该中性网格结构能显著减小局部冲刷坑内的流速,有效抑制局部冲刷,且对桩前来流来沙的影响微弱。孔径比7.7的网格防护结构可以使无黏性沙床上圆桩的局部冲刷深度减少92%,已存在的冲刷坑则可被修复73%。这些研究成果为桩墩局部冲刷防护提供一种新的思路。     

导流叶片在单向流下的三维水流数值模拟

利用三维水流数值模型对单向流下导流叶片对流场的影响情况进行了模拟与分析可知,计算值与实测值吻合较好,结果表明本文采用的模型能较好地解决复杂的紊流场;并通过水槽水平切面流场的分析可知在导流叶片附近存在一个逆时针漩涡,这个漩涡是造成导流叶片附近泥沙发生局部冲刷的主要原因.     

Prediction of local scour around circular piles under waves using a novel artificial intelligence approach

Abstract

The scour phenomena around vertical piles in oceans and under waves may influence the structure stability. Therefore, accurately predicting the scour depth is an important task in the design of piles. Empirical approaches often do not provide the required accuracy compared with data mining methods for modeling such complex processes. The main objective of this study is to develop three data-driven methods, locally weighted linear regression (LWLR), support vector machine (SVR), and multivariate linear regression (MLR) to predict the scour depth around vertical piles due to waves in a sand bed. It is the first effort to develop the LWLR to predict scour depth around vertical piles. The models simulate the scour depth mainly based on Shields parameter, pile Reynolds number, grain Reynolds number, Keulegan–Carpenter number, and sediment number. 111 laboratory datasets, derived from several experimental studies, were used for the modeling. The results indicated that the LWLR provided highly accurate predictions of the scour depths around piles (R?=?0.939 and RMSE = 0.075). Overall, this study demonstrated that the LWLR can be used as a valuable tool to predict the wave-induced scour around piles.     

海底输油管道底砂床冲刷机理研究

设计了海底输油管道水槽冲刷试验模型,研究了海底输油管道与砂床处于不同相对位置情况下床砂起动流速的变化,采用理想流体映射定理对其进行了理论分析,探讨起动流速变化规律。结合有限元数值模拟对试验进行细化分析,研究了海底管道底砂床砂粒起动的产生机理,根据研究结果将冲刷过程划分为五个阶段。阐明了海底管道暴露冲刷的危害性和实时监测的重要性。     

轴线倾斜海底管道冲刷速率试验研究

通过物理模型试验研究水流作用下轴线倾斜海底管道的三维局部冲刷问题。利用超声波探头监测管道下部冲刷沿管轴线方向的扩展过程,分析海底管道三维局部冲刷的动态发展机理。由模型沙的冲蚀试验,建立沙床面剪切应力与泥沙表观侵蚀速率之间的关系式,并引入经验公式对沙床面剪切应力放大系数、泥沙表观侵蚀速率以及远场床面剪切应力之间的关系进行表达。由倾斜管道模型试验,在分析冲刷扩展位置随时间变化数据的基础上,结合上述经验公式以及沙床面剪切应力放大系数与管道埋深的关系,建立轴线倾斜海底管道冲刷扩展速率的预测公式。     

Scour around coastal structures: a summary of recent research

This paper summarizes the results of the European Union Marine Science and Technology (EU MAST) III project “Scour Around Coastal Structures” (SCARCOST). The summary is presented under three headings: (1) Introduction; (2) Flow and scour processes with the subheadings: flow and scour processes around vertical cylinders; flow and scour processes at detached breakwaters; flow and scour processes at submerged breakwaters; and the effect of turbulence on sediment transport; and (3) Sediment behaviour close to the structure with the subheadings: field measurement and analysis of wave-induced pore pressures and effective stresses around a bottom seated cylinder; non-linear soil modelling with respect to wave-induced pore pressures and gradients; wave-induced pressures on the bottom for non-linear coastal waves, including also wave kinematics; development of a numerical model (linear soil modelling) to calculate wave-induced pore pressures—the effect of liquefaction on sediment transport; penetration of blocks in non-consolidated fine soil; and cyclic stiffness of loose sand.The paper also includes a discussion of the role of scale effects in laboratory testing and the applicability of the results obtained in supporting engineering design.