Experimental Study On Triangular Labyrinth Channel Design Of Drip Irrigation Emitter For Anti-clogging

Drip emitter is the key component of drip irrigation system. Its performace and quality will directly determine the working performance of the whole drip irrigation system. However, the clogging of drip emitter is a serious problem which has not been solved yet. Because of this, it is very significant to study on the relationship between the structure parameters of emitter channel and the hydraulic and anti-clogging performance. Therefore, this research chooses triangular labyrinth channel as study object, angle of dentations and stagger dentations as controlling factors of structure, then designs sixteen different kinds of structures of triangular labyrinth channel, according to several kinds of labyrinth channels in China. In the end, it studies on how the factors of structure characteristics and section size of labyrinth channel influence the anti-clogging performance of emitter using the method of CFD numerical simulation, Sample Manufacturing and indoor and outdoor experiment. The main results show that:(1) The errors of discharge between CFD numerical simulation and experimental testing are all smaller than 20%. The distribution tendency of the two results has a good relativity without significant differences and the two results basically tallies. It means that it is feasible to use CFD simulates internal flow field of emitter and the final results will provide theoretical basis for predicting emitter discharge and hydraulic and anti-clogging performance.(2)On the consideration of the requirement of discharge and energy dissipation effect, the smaller stagger dentations are and the larger angle of dentations are, the better the anti-clogging performance of emitter is. Therefore, it suggests that angle of dentations should be controlled at about 60°, and the stagger dentations should be chosen between -0.25 and +0.25.(3)It reveals that the size of stagger dentations plays an key role in the performance of anti-clogging, then is the angle. So a larger section area and a mezzo angle is helpful to improve the anti-clogging performance and decrease the production cost.(4)It can be concluded from the whole procedure of design and experiment that parameterized design of the emitter channel-simulatio of the flow field-prototype making and forming-hydraulic and anti-clogging performance testing is a effective method of emitter designing.