COMPARISON OF ROTATION AND WATER DISTRIBUTION UNIFORMITY USING DISPERSION DEVICES FOR IMPACT AND ROTARY SPRINKLERS

Abstract

AbstractThe study provides laboratory testing of the effect of dispersion devices on the rotation and water distribution uniformity for impact and rotary spray sprinklers. A MatLab program was used to simulate the overlapped spray quadrants and visualize the variations in water distribution. Results showed rotation completion times of 15.5, 14.8, 15.1, and 14.9 s were not significantly different (p < 0.05) between the quadrants for the impact sprinkler with the F2 dispersion device. However, the rotary sprinkler with the R2 dispersion device produced larger rotation completion times of 20.2, 18.2, 20.4 and 17.3 s with significant differences (p > 0.05) between the quadrants under a pressure of 200 kPa. The rotary sprinkler with R2 gave large deviations (0.0–2.8 mm h−1) in water distribution, but the deviations from the impact sprinkler with F2 were smaller (0.0–1.7 mm h−1), indicating a more uniform water distribution. Insignificant differences (p < 0.05) occurred between the coefficient of uniformity (CU) of the overlapped quadrants with the same spacing, which fell within the acceptable CU of 75% for the sprinklers. The study revealed that the impact sprinkler equipped with F2 performed as efficiently as the rotary sprinkler with R2 from the perspective of rotation stability and water distribution uniformity. Findings from this study could be significant and useful for optimizing water dispersion devices for improving the performance of impact sprinklers under low‐pressure conditions. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.