Numerical Simulation of Water Distribution with Uptake Root in Drip Irrigation using Different Soil Hydraulic Models

Abstract

Surface drip irrigation is one of the most conservative irrigation techniques that help control providing water directly on the soil through the emitters. It can supply fertilizer and providing water directly to plant roots by drippers. One of the essential needs for trickle irrigation nowadays is to obtain more knowledge about the moisture pattern under the trickling source for various types of soil with various discharge levels with trickle irrigation. Simulation numerical using HYDRUS-2D software, version 2.04 was used to estimate an equation for the wetted area from a single surface drip irrigation in unsaturated soil is taking into account water uptake by roots. In this paper, using two soil types were used, namely sandy loam and clay loam, with three types of plants; (corn, tomato, and sweet sorghum). The soil wetting pattern was analyzed each half an hour for three hours of irrigation time and three initial soil moisture content. Equations for wetted radius and wetted depth were predicted and evaluated by utilizing the statistical parameters for the different hydraulic soil models (Model Efficiency (EF) and Root Mean Squares Error (RMSE)). The values RMSE does not exceed 0.40 cm, and EF is greater than 0.96 for all types of soil. These values were between the values obtained from program  HYDRUS-2D and the values obtained from formulas. This shows that evolved formula can be utilized to describe the soil wetting pattern from the surface drip irrigation system. The relative error for the different hydraulic soil models was calculated and compared with Brooks and Corey's model, 1964. There was good agreement compared with different models. RMSE was 0.23 cm, while the relative error -1% and 1 for EF for wetted radius.