Irrigation Sciences and Engineering

Irrigation Sciences and Engineering

Simulation of Temperature Effect on Emitter Discharge

Authors
1 Ph.D. Student, Department of irrigation & Drainage. Shahid Chamran Univ. Ahwaz, Iran
2 Professor, Water Sciences Engineering Faculty, Shahid Chamran Univ. Ahwaz, Iran
3 Ph.D Student, Department of irrigation & Drainage. Shahid Chamran Univ. Ahwaz, Iran
Abstract
Emitter is the key component in drip irrigation system; it is designed to let out the water in pipe to drop into the soil slowly and uniformly. Uniformity of emitter discharge is dependent on some parameters such as water temperature. Temperature variations influence water properties, especially viscosity. This may be a significant factor affecting flow through emitters. Field and laboratory study on this object is time-consuming and expensive. Computational fluid dynamics provides a promising tool to help in study of flow behavior of water passing through the channel of labyrinth. In this study, the flow in labyrinth channels was simulated by using the method of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to calculate temperature effect on emitter discharge for three sample of one type emitter. For this purpose, emitter discharge for the six pressures: 2, 4, 6.1, 9.2, 12.25 and 16.33 mH2O and six temperature: 5, 15, 20, 25, 35, 45 and 55 °C was simulated. Samples were destroyed and longitudinal and latitudinal cuttings for the samples were obtained and sizes of the channels were calculated by photography with Scanning Electronic Microscope (SEM). To simulate pressures and temperature effect on rate of discharge using CFD, laminar flow model and turbulence model was applied. Verification of Results showed that the simulated data had a good agreement with the experimental data and also emitter discharge is insensitive to temperature variations and CFD provides a promising tool to reduce the cost and time of study on emitters.
Keywords

  • Receive Date 06 July 2010
  • Revise Date 02 May 2011
  • Accept Date 04 May 2011
  • Publish Date 22 May 2011