Experimental and numerical investigation of pressure losses of the barb protrusions in lateral connections of micro irrigation equipments

Objective: In the study, the pressure losses caused by different types of barb protrusions in online drip emitters within lateral pipes of different diameters were investigated experimentally and numerically. Materials and Methods: Three different online drip emitters, four types barb protrusions (D1, D2D, D2A, D3), and lateral pipes with nominal diameters of 16 mm and 20 mm were used. In the first stage, pressure losses were measured at dripper spacing of 25, 50, and 100 cm. In the second stage, pressure losses were analyzed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with different turbulence models. Results: In the experiments, the highest-pressure loss was observed in dripper D2D, while the lowest was in dripper D3. Drip emitters D1 and D2A showed similar pressure loss values. The CFD analysis results for pressure losses were statistically evaluated, and the Standard k-ω model yielded the lowest MAE and NRMSD values among the turbulence models.Conclusion: The results showed that pressure losses in lateral lines can be estimated with minor errors using the Standard k-ω turbulence model in numerical analysis.