Abstract

SAUCEDO, Heber; ZAVALA, Manuel  and  FUENTES, Carlos. Optimal flow for border irrigation with the presence of a shallow water table. Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2013, vol.4, n.5, pp.99-109. ISSN 2007-2422.

Optimal irrigation flow-i.e. the flow resulting in the greatest uniformity efficiency while maintaining acceptable application efficiency and irrigation requirement values-was determined for border irrigation with a water table in the soil profile. The calculation was performed using a simulation model developed by the authors of this work to describe the four border irrigation phases, and was based on the coupling of Saint-Venant and Richards equations. The former equation describes the flow of water with a free surface over the soil and the latter enables simulating the transfer of water into the soil. Regardless of the presence of a water table in the soil profile, the relationship between the border length and the optimal flow is basically linear, a situation which occurs when the soil profile is semi-infinite. That is, it is deduced that the basically linear dependence between the border length and optimal irrigation flow is independent of the initial distribution of the pressure in the soil.

Keywords : border irrigation; optimal irrigation flow; Richards equation; Saint-Venant equations; shallow water table.

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