Prediction of Equilibrium Scour Holes Using Optimization Procedures

This paper presents an optimization procedure that finds the equilibrium scour depth under a pipeline. Even though much knowledge on scour is available for the most typical marine structures such as a vertical circular monopile of a horizontal pipelines the calculation of the scour depth complex and time-consuming as the transient solution is often modelled as well. In this paper we present a optimization procedure that combined with a computational fluid dynamics, and a model of the bed load finds the equilibrium shape of a scour hole. This can potentially speed up the calculation of the shape of the equilibrium scour hole with a factor of 100. However, it comes with a coast as we will not model the transition and the time scale of the scour hole development.