ASCE has honored Irfan Abid, Ph.D.; Terry W. Sturm, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE; Bruce W. Melville, Ph.D., M.ASCE; and Seung Ho Hong with the 2026 Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize for their paper “Interaction between Pier Scour and Other Components of Scour under Clear-Water Conditions,” Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, September 2024.
The authors make a significant contribution by tackling a central problem in fluid mechanics and hydraulic engineering: the interaction among scour processes induced by piers, abutments, and flow contraction under a wide range of flow conditions. Beyond offering valuable physical insights and useful predictive formulas, the study shows that some widely used approaches for computing scour may yield overly conservative estimates. These results pave the way for further laboratory tests, and reexamination of current recommendations in manuals.
The Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize is presented to the author or authors of the paper that is judged to be of superior merit in dealing with a problem of flowing water, either in theory or in practice.
