JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

The emitter discharge is affected by parameters such as pressure, irrigation water temperature, manufacturer’s coefficient of variation, and emitter clogging. In order to study the effects of irrigation water temperature on emitter discharge and to determine the discharge-pressure variations and manufacturer’s coefficient of variations, an experimental trickle irrigation system was designed and studied in the greenhouse, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology. Since the sensitivity of different emitters to water temperature variations is variable, four different, widely used, types of Iranian emitters including in-line long-path emitter, gun emitter, pressure compensating emitter, and double-chamber tube were used. Each emitter was evaluated under 14 different irrigation water temperature treatments ranging from 11 to 43.5°C.

 The results showed that in general as water temperature increases, the emitter discharge increases linearly in all types, except for the pressure compensating emitter in which the discharge decreases linearly. The emitter uniformity, absolute emission uniformity and Christiansen uniformity coefficient parameters were affected by emitter discharge variations. For each type of emitter under study, the changes in manufacturer’s coefficient of variations due to irrigation water temperature were different. The manufacturer’s coefficients of variations at a water temperature of about 20°C for double-chamber tube, in-line long-path emitter, gun emitter and pressure compensating emitter were equal to 5, 7, 13 and 22 percent, respectively. Moving from gun emitter to the double-chamber tube and finally to the in-line long-path emitter, the sensitivity to irrigation water temperature decreased. Sensitivity to pressure variations decreased in the order of gun emitter, double-chamber tube, in-line long-path emitter, and finally pressure compensating emitter.

In order to increase the distribution uniformity of sprinkler irrigation systems, some influential parameters such as wind speed, arrangement, space and type of sprinklers must be studied and controlled. In this study, a set of experiments were conducted based on ISO 7749/2(1990) standard to evaluate the ADF 25⁰ and Nelson, F80APV sprinklers. To study the effects of wind velocity, operating pressure, various sprinkler layouts and spacing on water distribution uniformity, the experiments were conducted based on a single sprinkler method. Four operating pressures in the range of one recommended by the manufacturer for each sprinkler were applied and three sprinklers’ spaces on lateral pipelines (22, 26, and 30 m) were simulated for square and rectangular layouts to estimate the water distribution uniformity. Results showed that the distribution uniformity of Nelson sprinkler in existing wind velocities and operating pressures had smaller changes than ADF sprinkler. The 4.5 bar pressure for ADF sprinkler was better than other pressures, and operating pressures for Nelson sprinkler did not have any significant effect on distribution uniformity. With the decrease of sprinkler spacing to the wetting diameter in the simulated space, uniformity coefficient was increased. The recommended sprinkler spacing to the wetting diameter for these sprinklers ranged from 0.4 to 0.5 for square and rectangular layouts.

The main purpose of this study is investigation of hydraulic properties in drip irrigation tape. In this study, 10 types of drip irrigation tape were tested, and the effect of 4 temperatures of water, 13, 23, 33 and 43 °C, was investigated according to the standard ISO 9261 and ISO IRISI. Initially all experiments were performed in standard temperature (23°C) in order to obtain qualitative evaluation indexes of tapes. The results obtained were as follows: According to the Cv, 8 models of tapes were ranked as good and 2 models as medium. According to the difference between the actual and nominal flow rates, 3 models were ranked as good, 3 models as medium, 3 models were acceptable and 2 models were unacceptable. According to the EU, 9 models were ranked as excellent and T3 was ranked as good. According to the UC, UC of all models was more than 70% and their flow rate variation follows normal distribution. According to q_var, flow rate changes in 3 models were acceptable, 2 models were ranked as good and 5 models were unacceptable.
 

The uniformity parameters in drip irrigation system are influenced by the slope of manifold and therefore, the evaluation of drip irrigation systems is important in slopping lands. In this research, different slopes of 0.2, 6, 11, 16, 20 and 25% were applied on the ground surface and manifold of drip irrigation system with diameters of 50, 63 and 75 mm and length of 70 m were installed on these uniform slopes. The lateral pipes with 16 mm diameter and 40 m length were placed on the contour lines and connected to manifold bilaterally. The results showed that in the normal emitters in above slopes, the qv(avg) values were 289, 6740, 46, 135, 38 and 27 percent, respectively, qv(max) values were 222, 48, 53, 90, 27 and 9 percent, respectively, and the CV values were 300, 114, 33, 140, 63 and 25 percent, respectively, higher than compensating emitters. However, in the normal emitters in above slopes, the EU values were 33, 34, 12, 25, 17 and 9 percent, respectively, EUa values were 26, 23, 6, 21, 15 and 13%, respectively, UC values were 17, 16, 4, 13, 14 and 9%, respectively, and US values were 10, 8, 2, 8, 5 and 4 percent, respectively, less than compensating emitters. Therefore, even in high slopes (20 and 25%), the irrigation efficiency in compensating emitters were better than normal emitters. The relationship between slope and discharge of emitters represented small changes in discharge of compensating emitters in sloping lands.