FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF MICROIRRIGATION HYDRAULICS USING A VIRTUALEMITTER SYSTEM

As the use of microirrigation expands, the need to analyze large syste ms (10,000 emitters or more) becomes more and more important. The purp ose of this research was to improve the design of large microirrigatio n systems using the finite element method and a virtual emitter system . To accomplish this objective, a second-order partial differential eq uation describing flow in a microirrigation system was developed and s olved using the finite element numerical procedure. Several alternativ e methods were developed for incorporating emitters to a virtual emitt er system where multiple emitters can be combined within a pipe elemen t or into a node. These alternative methods were evaluated using both linear and quadratic elements. The resulting procedures were found to be fast, accurate, and efficient in the hydraulic analysis of large mi croirrigation systems.