Water droplets behavior in sprinkler irrigation: Thermal-fluid dynamical assessment and quantum considerations

Abstract

The present paper is aimed at analyzing the behavior of water droplets traveling in air from the nozzle to the ground according to a traditional numerical and a quantum point of views. Considering a single-droplet system, an analytical model based on the Newtonian kinematics is here described, considering the most relevant parameters involved: droplet initial diameter, droplet initial velocity, water and air temperatures, diffusion coefficient of water in air, air relative humidity, environmental radiation, and presence of wind. The effect of those parameters on water evaporation is, hence, discussed. Differently, when a multi-droplet system in considered, the problem becomes even more complicated due to the difficulty of assessment of interdroplet reciprocal affections and both a Newtonian description and a numeric implementation are definitely hard to obtain. An alternative to traditional approaches to treat the water droplet dynamics is the quantum approach, which is here introduced and pointed out in order to give an as full as possible description of the whole phenomenon. Such an approach offers a more tight description of the microscopic phenomena that influence the evolution of the whole multi-droplet system.