Scour at the eastern scheldt storm surge barrier

Abstract

The Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier is one of the primary flood defense structures in the Netherlands. Since its construction, large scour holes have developed downstream of the applied bed protection at both sides of the inlet that have grown much deeper than foreseen during the design phase. Flow velocity data collected at the location of the scour holes revealed a pronounced contraction of the tidal flow towards the deepest part of the scour hole, in combination with a suppression of vertical flow separation when horizontal velocity differences are present and large enough. To investigate these phenomena we set up a laboratory experiment. First results of this experiment show strong similarities between the flow observed in the field, and the flow observed in the laboratory. Therefore, this set-up can be used to further investigate the phenomena that are observed at the Eastern Scheldt and other similar configurations.