Impacts of Bridge Piers on Scour at Downstream River Training Structures: Submerged Weir as an Example

River training structures are conventionally used to improve river stability and ecological conditions and to protect the upstream instream infrastructures from scour and erosion. A submerged weir is a typical river training structure usually built downstream of bridges for grade control. Flow over the weir can cause local scour, destabilizing both the structure and the trained river reach. It is therefore important for safe design to estimate the scour accurately and understand the effects of an upstream bridge pier on local scour at submerged weirs. This study describes experiments on the scour process at a submerged weir with an upstream bridge pier, varying the distance L between the two. In this study, 56 experiments were conducted using uniform coarse sand with a median grain size d50 = 0.85 mm in a sediment‐recirculating flume. For clear‐water scour, the experiments showed that the bedform induced by the pier scour process creates a scour‐and‐fill process upstream of the submerged weir; and the upstream pier can also affect the scour downstream of the submerged weir, through two mechanisms: (i) upstream sediment replenishment and (ii) flow section constriction. The mechanisms (i) and (ii) can reduce and increase the downstream clear‐water scour depth at the submerged weir, respectively. For live‐bed scour, a pier upstream can reduce and increase the scour depth upstream and downstream of the submerged weir, respectively. Based on the experimental data, the dependence of the scour depth at the submerged weir on L is evaluated. Key Points Experimental data of the scour at submerged weirs with an upstream circular bridge pier are provided The effects of bridge piers on the scour process at downstream river training structures (submerged weir as an example) are illuminated The quantitative impacts of upstream bridge piers on the scour depth at submerged weirs for different separation distances are evaluated