Scour around impermeable spur dikes: a review

Scour is a natural process in rivers initiated by the erosive action of the activated water. Spur dikes are built across the flow to defend the stream erosion and facilitate the shifting of the river away from the bank. The spur dike weakens due to stream bed scouring and erosion, which is usually documented as the key reason of spur dike failure. Failure of spur dikes due to local scour has inspired many investigators to discover the cause of scouring phenomenon and to forecast the temporal and maximum scour depth near spur dikes. In this paper, a review of the scour around spur dikes with all possible aspects, like temporal and maximum scour depth, flow pattern, parameters affecting scour phenomenon has been discussed briefly.