The first case study was a numerical study on a bridge pier subject to scouring. The bridge pier was modelled by conventional finite element methods, and its dynamic acceleration responses to water flow forces were calculated and then taken to estimate the energy harvested by the MEH. The calculated energy from the scouring pier was compared to that from the non-scouring pier to investigate whether or not the harvested energy was sensitive to pier scouring. Details of the numerical study and the results are presented and discussed as follows.Our target bridge pier (shown in Figure 3) was of a typical frame type often seen in Japanese suburbs. It consisted of 4 columns rigidly connected by a pier cap to support the superstructure above it. The dimensions of its components were referred to its design drawings and truthfully assigned in our finite element model. Its 4 columns and the pier cap were modelled with 3D beam elements, and the bridge deck was lumped as point masses on the pier top. The pier was made of concrete, whose density was assumed 2400 kg/m3, Young’s modulus 30 GPa, and poison ratio 0.2. Pier-soil contact was simplified as fixed boundary condition, where the pier was fixed at a level soil surface and the sections buried inside the soil was ignored. Scouring was simplified as a linearly tilted soil surface as the dashed lines shown in the same figure (Figure 3).Conducting the eigenvalue analysis on the finite element model, we could get the model’s modal properties. The first 9 modes for both non-scouring and scouring cases are shown in Figure 4. Obviously, the pier’s modal frequency presented a significant change when the pier suffered from scouring. For example, the frequency of the first in-plane bending mode (i.e. Mode 1 in Figure 4) dropped from 5.90 Hz to 4.75 Hz, the frequency of the first out of-plane bending mode (i.e. Mode 2) dropped from 15.20 Hz to 11.66 Hz, etc.Water flow pressure is almost the same in the vertical direction along the pier (Nasim et al. 2019), so the water flow force was simplified as a concentrated force at the middle height of the water layer. Since the 4 columns were closely aligned, where their spacing was only twice the diameter, it would be complex to consider the turbulence between them. As a result, we assumed the water flow force only exerts on the first column upstream. According to a previous work (Wang et al. 2015), the water flow force F on a bridge pier can be written as