Investigating the effect of rotation speed, rotation factor, and irrigation duration on wind drift and evaporation losses of agricultural sprinklers

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of rotation factor, rotation speed and irrigation duration on Wind Drift and Evaporation Losses (WDEL) of impact and gear driven sprinklers. Experiments were carried out in the research farm of Kurdistan University and in an area of 3600 m2 by single sprinkler method on two Komet R8 and Luxor sprinklers. The results showed: 1- Up to the wind speed of 11.5 km/h and the air temperature of 40 °C, there is no significant difference between the WDEL of sprinklers2- The average WDEL of Komet sprinkler in low wind speed is 8.5% and Luxor is 10.4% and their difference is not significant. With the increase of wind speed from low to moderate, increase in WDEL of Komet was 125% and Luxor was 21% and their difference was significant (P<0.05) 3- In both sprinklers WDEL increased with increasing working pressure, but this increasing was not significant 4- In both sprinklers, WDEL increases with the increase of vapor pressure deficit, but this increase was significant only in Komet and in the high range (P<0.05). 5- By increasing the irrigation duration from 1 h to 3 h, the WDEL of Komet decreased by 24%. 6- By increasing the sprinkler rotation speed from 1.5 Rpm to 3.5 Rpm, the WDEL of Komet decreased by 13.4%. In general, the Komet had more WDEL potential than the Luxor and in the irrigation events of farmers, the WDEL is lower than the reported values of the research.