Hydraulic Study, Design & Analysis of Different Geometries of Drip Irrigation Emitter Labyrinth
Sachin S Patil1, P T Nimbalkar2, Abhijit Joshi3
1Sachin S Patil, Dept. of Civil, Bharti Vidyapeeth University, Pune India.
2P T Nimbalkar, Dept. of Civil, Bharti Vidyapeeth University, Pune India.
3Abhijit Joshi, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd, Jalgaon India.
Manuscript received on May 12, 2013. | Revised Manuscript received on June 18, 2013. | Manuscript published on June 30, 2013. | PP: 455-462 | Volume-2, Issue-5, June 2013. | Retrieval Number: E1854062513/2013©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: In order to solve the problem of water shortage in agriculture, it’s necessary to develop water-saving irrigation. Drip Irrigation is a method of applying uniform and precise amount of water directly to the root zone of the plants as per the requirement, through emitters at frequent intervals over a long period of time, via pressure pipe network. As the key device in drip irrigation systems, the emitter is to drip the pressured water in the pipeline to the root of the crops evenly and steadily, so as to guarantee the water demand for crop growth. The quality of the emitter has an important effect on the reliability, life span of the drip irrigation system and irrigation quality. Usually, the structure of the emitter channel is very complex with a dimension. Emitter’s intricate inner channel makes the flow of water have turbulent behavior. In the design of emitter structure, we use 3D parametric CAD software SolidWorks 2012 to design labyrinth emitter. According to emitter’s hydraulic performance and its requirement for anti-clogging, we can design new channel structures by changing those dimensions. The irrigation quality of drip irrigation system is verified by emitter’s hydraulic performance. In the high-pressure pipeline, the water energy may dissipate after flowing through the labyrinth channel and the flow rate can be controlled to meet the water need of the crops. To ensure the emitter’s hydraulic performance, before the fabrication of emitter, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to predict emitter’s flow rate and analyze its hydraulic performance under various water pressures.
Keywords: Anticlogging, Discharge, Drip Irrigation, Exponent, Emitter.