Testing and Evaluation of Surge Flow Gate For Discharge Measurement Under Different Operating Conditions

Abstract

With surge irrigation, applying surges to an area is a cheap labor task. In industrialized nations, a variety of electronic valves for discontinuous water application (surges) are available; but their pricing prevents their usage in emerging regions. Additionally, these valves are too advanced for use by growers in underdeveloped nations. As a result, a basic Automatic Surge Gate was developed and tested in the labs to assess its effectiveness in terms of producing onoff surges. The reservoir was built to hold or collect low inflows for barrier functioning, and the gate was positioned on the suction side of the reservoir. Inflow rates, pinions, and poundage placements on the gate lever were the working parameters defined for the gate functioning. In the current investigation, three inflow rates 134, 169, and 187 l/s were employed. By leveraging the low inflows to the reservoir, the automatic surge gate demonstrated the possibility for automating the on-off action. The surge gate produced sizeable outflows even at the lowest inflow rate of 134 l/s into the reservoir. Power-law equations were discovered to be a good representation of the behavior in the statistical models that were also created using quasi statistical method.