Science News Daily

Mimicking fish and tailoring radar to warn of bridge peril

Floods cut down more bridges than fire, wind, earthquakes, deterioration, overloads and collisions combined, costing lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.The speed and turbulence of an overflowing stream scours away the river bottom that provides the support for a bridge foundation, causing more than 60 percent of bridge failures in the U.S. in the last 30 years.Currently, "there is no way to determine risk during these crucial events," said Xiong "Bill" Yu, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the Case School of Engineering.To change that, Yu has begun designing what he calls smart infrastructure: underwater sensors that relay real-time information about how much river bottom has been stripped away and how stable, or unstable, the supports of a bridge remain. His work is being funded by a $450,001 CAREER grant received from the National Science Foundation in 2009."We don't fully understand how scouring takes place," Yu said. Water passing a bridge suppor

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