Complete Hydrodynamic Border-Strip Irrigation Model

Abstract

In this study, a hydrodynamic model is presented for simulating all the phases of border-strip irrigation. The explicit, second-order accurate MacCormack scheme is used for solving the governing equations of surface irrigation. In this method, the advance and recession fronts need not be considered explicitly and any infiltration equation can be coupled to the surface flow equations easily. The empirical Kostiakov equation (Model 1DKO) and the analytical Parlange equation (Model 1DPA) for infiltration are considered in this study. The implicit Parlange equation is solved using the Newton-Raphson technique. The models are validated using the experimental data available in literature. The present results are also compared with the earlier numerical results based on the characteristic method. A simple subgrid technique is introduced in order to obtain a high grid resolution near the advancing front and at the same time achieve a minimum computational cost. This is based on using two different grid sizes for computation. An equation for the optimum grid size ratio is presented and is validated using numerical experimentation.