No abstract

Recently maintenance operation is considered one of the main axes of engineering management of pressurized irrigation systems. There for the aim of this research work was to select the most suitable maintenance programs to improve drip irrigation systems laterals performance, and decrease the damages caused by emitter clogging as a result of bad maintenance applications. The physical maintenance programs included lateral end flushing with two different operation times"5, 10 minutes at the end of each irrigation", at four interval times "weekly, Biweekly , monthly, and at the end of each season". The flushing 5minutes was applied once continuous, and the other intermitted. The systems performance was evaluated through three parameters: discharge, clogging, and pressure through seven evaluation criteria mentioned in the research. The results showed that biweekly flushing for 5 min. continuously (MS 1 P 1 2) proved to be the best flushing with fresh water program which decreases clogged emitters 44.21 % to be closer to the standard (control) with 4.85 %. Also partially clogged emitters decreased by 46.7 %, Emission uniformity(EU%) increased 19.4 %, and distribution uniformity(DU%) 13.9 % more than the control treatment. (MS 1 P 1 2) was followed by the weekly flushing for 10 min. continuously. (MS 3 P 1 1) as it raised (DU%) with 12.3 % and gave the highest value of pressure uniformity (UP%) that reaches 93.14%.