Hydraulic and Anti-clogging Performance Evaluation of a Novel Cylindrical Drip Emitter using CFD Techniques

Abstract

An inline cylindrical drip emitter of 4 Lh-1 design flow rate is developed incorporating favourable geometric features against the physical clogging. The emitter model, with one-outlet and two-outlet variants, was tested for its hydraulic and anti-physical-clogging performance using Ansys Fluent 2022 software. The simulated flow rate of 3.988 and 3.992 Lh-1 is found to be very close to the design flow rate. The emitter exponent values of 0.4351 and 0.4406 for the one-outlet and two-outlet variants, respectively, are found to be within the stipulated limit of 0.5 by Bureau of India Standards (BIS) guidelines. The discrete particle modelling (DPM) simulation revealed that 100% of the particles entering the inlets of the emitter variants are escaping within an average residence time of 0.3779-1.036 s for the one-outlet variant and 0.2044-1.005 s for the two-outlet variant. The average residence time increased with increase in the particle size from 0.1 µm to 100 µm, however the same is not affected by the mass flow rate of particles. Overall, the novel cylindrical emitter developed is found to be satisfactory in its hydraulic and anti-physical-clogging performance. Index Terms: CFD, DPM, Ansys fluent, Drip Emitter, Anti- clogging, SST, k-ω Turbulence Model.