AUTOMATED FIELD IRRIGATION SYSTEM USING SIDE WEIRS

An automated side weir irrigation system is designed using the concept of constant specific energy. The characteristics of the spatially var ied flow along a main channel with multiple side weir outlets are anal yzed to determine the roughness coefficient of the channel pertinent t o spatially varied flow. A computer program is developed to obtain the geometric parameters of the uniformly discharging weir outlets in a s ide weir irrigation system. The discharge in the main channel. desired discharges over the weir outlets and the hydraulic and geometric char acteristics of the main channel are the main inputs to the computer pr ogram. The experiments conducted to evaluate the performance of the de veloped system show that the deviations of observed discharges from de sired ones over the side weir outlets are within 5% for majority of th e test runs and in no case these are greater than 10%.