The flow characteristics around a partially buried short cylinder on a simulated laboratory river bed were examined experimentally and numerically. Experiments were conducted in a 50 m long tilting flume with vertical walls made of acrylic plastic and steel floor covered by a 24 m long sand pit, at high Reynolds numbers. After the burial and the scour pattern around the object reached equilibrium morphodynamic conditions, velocity records were taken with an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) probe. The flow structure around the object was investigated using an LES turbulence closure model. The experiments and the simulations allowed establishing a spatial and temporal correlation between shear stress levels, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), and the resulting scouring activity that leads to the burial and the scour hole topology around the object. The LES closure allowed studying the highly unsteady coherent turbulent structures generated not only by the object but from the surrounding bedforms. Herein, only the numerical results are presented. © 2012 ASCE.