Automated Field Irrigation System Using Side Weirs

Abstract

An automated side weir irrigation system is designed using the concept of constant specific energy. The characteristics of the spatially varied flow along a main channel with multiple side weir outlets are analyzed to determine the roughness coefficient of the channel pertinent to spatially varied flow. A computer program is developed to obtain the geometric parameters of the uniformly discharging weir outlets in a side weir irrigation system. The discharge in the main channel, desired discharges over the weir outlets and the hydraulic and geometric characteristics of the main channel are the main inputs to the computer program. The experiments conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed system show that the deviations of observed discharges from desired ones over the side weir outlets are within 5% for majority of the test runs and in no case these are greater than 10%.