Theoretical Foundations of Water-Conducting Belt Design for Wide Coverage Sprinklers Using Numerical Simulation

Improvement of wide-coverage sprinkler technical level requires provision of high irrigation productivity and quality with the minimum cost of construction, rational use of water and energy. It is necessary to maintain the required flow-pressure characteristics regardless of sprinkler external operating conditions and the length of the water supply belt. The article discusses the possibility of mathematical modeling application for a wide sprinkler design. The studies showed that during the calculation it is possible to get by with the finite equations without resorting to the differential equations of fluid motion theory with variable mass. The obtained dependences served as the basis for the development of water-conducting belt calculation methods for a wide-sprinkler. A numerical simulation of the water supply belt operation of the KASKAD sprinkler is presented with standard values for the pipeline diameters and the variable length of the sprinkler. Numerically obtained graphs of the flow rate and the required pressure dependences on water supply belt length for two design options: with a sector end sprinkler and an end longrange sprinkler operating from a booster pump. By eliminating the length of the water supply belt for the considered two design options, they designed the flow-discharge characteristics of the sprinkler. They presented an example of a constructive solution selection for the water-conducting belt of a sprinkler according to flow-pressure characteristics.