Semiempirical Solution for Determining the Clear Water Local Scour Depth of Pile Groups

Local scour around pile groups is an important and challenging problem in various engineering applications. In this work, we develop a semiempirical solution for the clear water local scour depth of pile groups on the basis of a well-established theoretical framework and experimental local scour data. This solution has two innovations: (1) extending the original local scour assumption for single piles to pile groups and (2) establishing semiempirical formulas for the clear water local scour depth of pile groups by integrating the pile configuration, wake vortex, and local scour effects. The results of the proposed solution are validated against experimentally documented local scour data, with a coefficient of determination of 0.873 and a root mean square error of 0.0905.