Scour Protection of Underwater Pipelines

A detailed literature review on the protection of local scour beneath a submarine pipeline is presented. The review covers two basic parts of countermeasures against the pipeline scour, namely preventing the onset of scour and stimulating the self-burial of a pipeline. The research progress on the methods of the two sections is discussed in detail separately. The methods preventing the onset of scour have been extensively studied, but the understanding on their mechanisms is yet to be improved. The progress in stimulating the self-burial of a pipeline mainly focuses on a spoiler attached to a pipeline, which is investigated comprehensively with both experiments and numerical simulations. Both parts of countermeasures have been applied in some practical engineering projects and the protection effects are generally satisfying.