Hydraulic Performance Assessment of Lesa at low Pressure

Abstract

Abstract To assist with the selection of appropriate low elevation spray application (LESA) technology, hydraulic performance tests at low pressure were conducted. The main structural parameters in this study were the aboveground height (A), spacing between the sprinklers (B), travel speed (C), and sprinkler nozzle diameter (D). An orthogonal array with four factors and three levels was selected, and the direct analysis technique was used to analyze the test data. Results show that the influencing factors in decreasing order of importance were as follows: CDBA for application depth; BACD for irrigation uniformity (CU); ACBD for application efficiency; CDBA for surface runoff; and CDBA for soil water content. The highest application efficiency obtained during the experiments was 95.1%, and the highest uniformity coefficient obtained was 96.4%. The application efficiency was high when the sprinkler height was low. CU was high when the spacing between the sprinklers was small. The surface runoff amount was low when the travel speed was high. The application depth and surface runoff were higher when the sprinkler nozzle diameter was larger. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.