An approach for simulating the hydraulic performance of irrigation laterals

A new method for simulating lateral hydraulics in laminar or turbulent flow has been developed. The outflow is considered as a discrete variable and the friction head losses are calculated using the Darcy–Weisbach equation with an equivalent friction factor. Local head losses are also computed by applying equivalent coefficients that can be dependent on Reynolds number. Considering these premises, a compact expression that is valid for any type of regime has been deduced for calculating global head losses along any lateral stretch. The proposed method is useful to workout the hydraulic computation of laterals with the inlet segment at full or fractional outlet spacing, and complex laterals when a different pipeline diameter, slope, flow regime or emitter gap have to be considered.