Proceedings of the 2023 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2023 Authors: Buie T., Farmer M.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) has the responsibility to ensure the safety of the traveling public along Mississippi's highways and interstates. This includes highway crossings that occur over water. The riverine systems at these crossings are constantly evolving based on their own geomorphology and independent dynamic factors upstream and downstream of the site. The channel banks of these systems can become unstable due to stream migration and potentially threaten the bridge abutments and highway embankments. This presentation will explore two examples of countermeasures that MDOT plans to implement for bank stabilization throughout the state—Bendway Weirs and Longitudinal Fill Stone Toe Protection (LFSTP). Based on guidance from the Federal Highway Administration, these countermeasures are modeled using 2-dimensional (2D) modeling methods as opposed to 1-dimentional (1D) modeling due to the former resulting in greater detail around the countermeasures. Each of these countermeasures has their own design challenges, and the greater detail provided by 2D modeling processes provide a higher level of confidence in design.