Numerous bridges fail all over the world every year because of ignoring the role of hydraulic factors, including flow and scour patterns in bridge designs. Hence, investigation of the flow pattern around intact and damaged bridge piers gains significant importance. This study provided experimental and numerical investigations of the flow pattern around damaged and intact bridge piers (short cylindrical and pillar elements). This topic is applicable to flooding conditions of rivers when and where the remainders of bridges and other structures on the river path could affect the flow pattern, making further flow pattern investigations under such conditions necessary. The experiments had been conducted in a straight channel with a length of 12 meters in Kerman, Iran. To collect the three dimensional flow velocity components, Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry (ADV) was employed. Further, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was utilized to compare the results of ADV. SSIIM software helped model the flow in this study, and Navier-Stokes equations and k-ε turbulent model was used for solving the flow field. Generally, the results obtained through the comparisons are indicative of an appropriate correspondence between the numerical and the experimental data. The results indicated that installing the piers along the channel resulted in displacement of the maximum bed shear stress from the last one-third zone of the channel to mid-channel. Also, the maximum bed shear stress increased by 72% in comparison to the case with no piers installed. Moreover, the maximum water level variations occurred in the case with both intact and damaged piers installed, where there was water level reduction downstream and water level increase upstream of the pier.