Design and Construction of Electronic Irrigation Canal Gate

Water level and flow control gates are the most important parts of any irrigation network. Most of the gates located in the irrigation networks face problems after the operation. While mechanizing gates for surface irrigation systems can greatly save water consumption and increase water efficiency. In this project, it was tried to design and construct a gate using modern technologies, which can be intelligently operated and able to pass the desired discharge. Bubble rubber was used to seal the gate and minimizing water loss. Electromotor, encoder, ultrasonic sensor, inverter, and PLC were used to mechanize the gate. An ultrasonic sensor was applied to read the water level. All the computations of the gate-opening rate are performed by the PLC and then the instructions are transmitted to the electromotor. The encoder is connected to the electromotor and, according to the computations, controls the number of motor revolutions for a given opening rate. The TIA Portal environment used to control the gate motion system. The program written in the TIA Portal environment includes all the settings related to the flow discharge, gate opening, sensitivity of the ultrasonic sensor, and gate-opening rate to provide the flexibility of the gate in real conditions. In order to calibrate the constructed sluice gate according to the obtained equation, several experiments were used and finally, the coefficient of 0.625 was obtained as a correction coefficient. The coefficient of determination and root mean square error for the calibrated equation were calculated to be 0.97 and 0.66, respectively. These results showed the suitable performance of the automatic gate based on a calibrated equation