0000000000983701
AUTHOR
Pietro Mario Di Dio
New Computational Fluid Dynamic Procedure to Estimate Friction and Local Losses in Coextruded Drip Laterals
The design of trickle irrigation systems is crucial to optimize profitability and to warrant high values for the emission uniformity (EU) coefficient. EU depends on variation of the pressure head due to head losses along the lines and elevation changes, as well as the water temperature, and other parameters related to the emitters (manufacturer's coefficient of variation, number of emitters per plants, emitter spacing). Trickle irrigation plants are usually designed using small diameter plastic pipes (polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride). The design problem, therefore, needs to consider head losses along the lines as well as emitter discharge variations due to the manufacturer's variability.…
Assessing a computational fluid dynamic technique (CFD) to evaluate pressure losses in drip irrigation laterals
Assessing a Local Losses Evaluation Procedure for Low-Pressure Lay-Flat Drip Laterals
In the past, several research experiments have focused on the hydraulic characterization of traditional drip irrigation systems, and different design methodologies have been proposed with the aim of achieving very high emitter discharge uniformity (EU). The increasing use of low-pressure lay-flat drip laterals, characterized by a thin-walled polyethylene pipe, makes necessary a specific determination of their hydraulic properties, aimed to a correct design of such systems. Here, the validity of an empirical local losses estimation model was assessed for five different commercial lay-flat drip tapes. Moreover, the errors in the maximum lateral lengths obtained for a fixed emitter uniformity,…
Verifica idraulica degli impianti per la microirrigazione attraverso una procedura di calcolo matriciale
Simplified Procedure to Evaluate Head Losses in Drip Irrigation Laterals
The lateral lines of a drip irrigation system consist of pressurized pipelines with inline or online emitters. Proper hydraulic design of drip laterals usually requires the accurate evaluation of the total head losses, represented by friction losses along the pipe and the emitters, and local losses due to the emitter connections. This paper extends the local loss evaluation procedure, previously obtained for coextruded laterals, on the basis of new experiments. In addition, a simplified procedure was proposed based on the constant outlet discharge assumption for a quick evaluation of total head losses in drip irrigation lines, taking into account the total local loss due to the emitter conn…