Design of Level Ground Laterals in Trickle Irrigation Systems

Abstract

A nonlinear differential equation describing the pressure head grade line along nontapered laterals is derived. For horizontal pipes, the solution of the problem yields the pressure head grade line implicitly in an integral form. The outstanding outcome of this approach is the establishment of an analytical relation between the inlet discharge and the pressure heads at the inlet and at the distal ends of the pipe. The current method is deemed to be very accurate as compared to the stepwise method. It is proven that the discharge within the pipe varies quasilinearly with the distance which corroborates the assumption of constant outflow used in the drop ratio approach. The main feature of this method is that it provides the tools whereby a designer can achieve the crossover from the input to the output data and vice versa.