Study on Unsteady Flow Based on Optimized Water Distribution Model in Irrigation District

The canal delivery system is the main infrastructure of agricultural irrigation. The efficiency of water use in agriculture can be achieved by mastering the dynamic process of unsteady flow in the channel. In this study, an unsteady flow model for the calculation of the water flow transition information of the river channel during the water distribution process was established, based on the water distribution scheme given by the backtracking-search algorithm (BSA). This model was more suitable for areas with inefficient channel systems. The research areas included the main irrigation channels in Xiying City, which is one of the typical agricultural areas in northwestern China. The scheme obtained by optimal solution proposed for Xiying Irrigation District was feasible. According to the results of the flow simulations, the sluice gate calculation correlation could determine the change process of the gate opening of each channel, which provided a basis to realize the modernization of the irrigation area.

Water distribution model for center pivot end gun sprinklers

ABSTRACT End gun sprinklers can increase the irrigated area by center pivot irrigation systems without a substantial investment. This study was carried out at the Universidade Federal de Lavras, MG state, Brazil, and aimed to describe and validate a water distribution model for center pivot end gun sprinklers. The gun sprinkler PLONA-RL250®, attached at the end point of a center pivot, was used to evaluate the model in field tests. The sprinkler working conditions considered were nozzle diameters of 14 x 6 mm, working pressure of 292 kPa, and four asymmetric wetted angle adjustments (95 + 20º; 90 + 90º; 60 + 60º; 45 + 45º). These tests were carried out for wind speed lower than 0.9 m s-1. The measured and simulated irrigation depths showed an average absolute difference of 0.65 mm and determination coefficients from 71.55 to 89.37%. Based on the confidence coefficient (c = 0.82) the model can be classified as very good (0.76 ≤ c ≤ 0.85). Sprinkler wetted angle adjustment of 110º (95 + 20º) resulted in uniform water distribution and, for effective radius of throw between 70 to 90% of the gun sprinkler´s radius of throw, this working condition resulted in Christiansen’s uniformity greater than 80%.

Locating Unreported Leaks with Modelling Tools and Pressure Monitoring: a Case Study

Water losses are a major concern for water companies, mostly due to their economical, technical, social and environmental negative impacts.Unreported leaks are a major cause of water losses in water distribution networks (WDNs) and they are difficult to locate, particularly in plastic pipes, large diameters and low pressure conditions. The location of these leaks is very time consuming and requires specialized human resources, using sophisticated and costly acoustic equipment.The use of modelling and optimization tools, supported by flow and pressure measurements, is showing to be a challenging alternative to the traditional procedure. This paper presents the application of the methodology proposed in Ribeiro L. S., 2012; Ribeiro L. S., 2015; Sousa, 2015 to a real WDN, highlighting the major difficulties faced when dealing with real world conditions, namely gathering and checking data, and building and calibrating the water distribution model.The results obtained in this case study show that this approach is very promising, encouraging future applications and developments.

Elevation Effect in Urban Water Distribution Model

Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA) is Thailand's national government agency responsible for the supply of water to 3 provinces Bangkok, Nonthaburi and Samut Prakan with more than 2,384.9 km2 of service area and 2,281,058 consumers in the year 2016. Bangkok, which is both the capital and the economic center of the country, is densely populated. Consequently, there is a huge demand for water; MWA has to supply 5.914 million cubic meters of water per day. Because the metropolitan water supply area is a densely populated city, the water supply system is very complex like a spider’s web. For this reason, MWA has adopted EPANET software for its water supply managing tool in the main pipeline system. There are some mistakes in the main pipe network; the elevations of the nodes are not assigned, so there are some errors. In this study, we have assigned elevations for all nodes on the pipeline network based on mean sea level (MSL). After adjusting the elevation of each node, it was found that the new pipeline network has increased the correlation between means to 0.893 from the existing model mean of that is 0.803 of accuracy up 0.09 (11.2%).