Designing, manufacturing and testing rainfall simulator nozzles

Rainfall simulator is one of the most effective instruments for using in soil erosion studies. Thus, many researches have been conducted in order to design, manufacture and calibrate various rainfall simulators commensurate with aim of study and climatic conditions all around the world. However, using the imported nozzles in Iran is not feasible due to high cost, and different climatic conditions. Therefore, the current study has tried to evaluate some various nozzles’ characteristics made by the authors in order to simulating natural rainfall happened in Mazandaran Province climate. For this purpose, a minute evaluation was made for a number of rainfall characteristics produced by nozzles used in other rainfall simulators as well as those made by the authors. The results of the study revealed that the nozzle designed and manufactured by the authors and coded as Apd4 could successfully simulate the natural rain under consideration. The medium drop size, velocity and fall angle of the simulated rain were respectively recorded by high speed imaging of 1.4 mm, 6.4 m s-1 and 89º.