Abstract
Microirrigation plants, if properly designed, allow for water use efficiency to be optimized and high values of emission uniformity to be obtained in the field. Disposing paired laterals, for which two distribution pipes extend in opposite directions from a common manifold, can contribute to reducing the initial investment cost that represents a limiting factor for small-scale farmers of developing countries where in the last decade, the diffusion of such irrigation systems has been increasing. The objective of this paper is to propose an analytical approach to evaluate the maximum lengths of paired drip laterals for any uniform ground slope, respecting the criteria to maintain emitter flow rates or the corresponding pressure heads within fixed ranges in order to achieve a relatively high field emission uniformity coefficient. The method is developed by considering the motion equations along uphill and downhill sides of the lateral and the hypothesis to neglect the variations of emitters’ flow rate along the lateral as well as the local losses due to emitters’ insertions. If for the uphill pipe, the minimum and the maximum pressure heads occur at the upstream end and at the manifold connection, respectively, on the downhill side, the minimum pressure head is located in a certain section of the lateral, depending on the geometric and hydraulic characteristics of the lateral, as well as on the slope of the field; a second relative maximum pressure head could also exist at the downstream end of the pipe. The proposed methodology allows in particular the number of emitters in uphill and downhill sides of the lateral to be determined separately, and therefore, once fixing emitter’s spacing, the length of the uphill and downhill laterals and the position of the manifold. Applications and validation of the proposed approach, considering different design parameters, are finally presented and discussed.
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Acknowledgments
Research was cofinanced by Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR) and FFR 2012-2013 granted by Università degli Studi di Palermo. The contribution to the manuscript has to be shared between authors as follows: theory and applications of the proposed procedure were carried out by Prof. Giorgio Baiamonte; and all authors analyzed results and wrote the text. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and suggestions during the revision stage.
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 5, 2013
Accepted: Apr 18, 2014
Published online: Jun 27, 2014
Discussion open until: Nov 27, 2014
Published in print: Jan 1, 2015
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Air pollution
- Continuum mechanics
- Dynamics (solid mechanics)
- Emissions
- Engineering mechanics
- Environmental engineering
- Flow (fluid dynamics)
- Flow rates
- Fluid dynamics
- Fluid mechanics
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Head (fluid mechanics)
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulics
- Hydrologic engineering
- Infrastructure
- Irrigation
- Irrigation engineering
- Irrigation systems
- Lateral pressure
- Pipeline systems
- Pipes
- Pollution
- Pressure (type)
- Pressure pipes
- Slopes
- Solid mechanics
- Water and water resources
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