Design Emission Uniformity of Horizontal Tapered Drip Laterals from the Normalized Pressure Head Distribution Approach
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 150, Issue 4
Abstract
A new analytical solution is developed to calculate the hydraulic emission uniformity () of horizontal tapered drip laterals. Our methodology builds upon normalizing the pressure head profiles along each segment of the lateral. Results indicated that the remains fairly consistent regardless of the total lateral length if a fixed pressure head tolerance () is assigned in the design process. Instead, the is primarily influenced by the number of emitters on each segment, their diameter ratio, and the emitter exponent . Employing tapered laterals for any given values of and enhances energy conservation compared to using single diameter laterals. However, it may lead to a reduction in the , particularly when the number of emitters in the smaller diameter segment is low relative to the total number of outlets. It was concluded that the coefficient of variation in emitter pressure heads and exhibit a nonlinear behavior in the case of tapered laterals, whereas it has been previously established as linear for single diameter laterals. Interestingly, when applying the newly formulated relationships for and while keeping the same diameter for both segments, the results align with those previously obtained for single diameter laterals. Validation of the proposed model against the precise stepwise solution revealed a maximum absolute relative error of . When excluding the fully laminar flow condition (), relative errors typically remained below 0.5%. The proposed model could serve as a foundational framework for designing tapered laterals to achieve a targeted uniformity level in future studies.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the Editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions during the revision stage.
Author contributions: Conceptualization: GB, SP, SHS, RTP; data curation: GB, SP; formal analysis: GB, SP; investigation: GB, SP; methodology: GB; supervision: GB; validation: GB, SP; visualization: GB, SP.; original draft preparation: GB, SP; and review and editing: GB, SP, SHS, RTP.
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© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Oct 7, 2023
Accepted: Feb 3, 2024
Published online: Apr 30, 2024
Published in print: Aug 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Sep 30, 2024
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