Location: Sustainable Water Management Research
Project Number: 6066-13000-006-038-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2025
End Date: Aug 31, 2027
Objective:
The objectives of this project are to support the parent project through improvements to irrigation which will lead to sustained availability of groundwater resources from the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer. The overall objective of this project is the refinement of automated hole punching in lay flat irrigation tubing. Specific objectives of this project are 1) Construct an improved prototype implement for the automatic insertion of prescribed size holes in lay flat irrigation tubing as the material is laid in the field behind a tractor, 2) perform material characterization on the various lay flat irrigation tubing materials available in the market today to understand the mechanical properties of the various material constructions, and 3) perform computational fluid dynamics on the flow characteristics in poly pipe and discharge openings to guide improvements in the application of irrigation water.
Approach:
The Cooperator will accomplish the objectives by revising the existing prototype automatic hole punching implement. The current prototype has served as a static testbed for initial development. The new prototype will improve upon the original by having improved poly pipe loading and handling features, the ability to load new pipe more quickly, account for manufacturing debris found in the lay flat tubing that causes stoppages in the current design, and incorporates the detection of furrow middles to ensure that the holes align with the furrow middles to apply water in the proper place. Global position systems (GPS) with real time kinematics (RTK) for precision will be employed along with a ground-based sensor for ensuring proper hole placement due to misalignments in rows due to curves in the field or slight deviations during planting operations. The improvements in Objective 1 will be based on currently on-going field trials of pipe produced using the original prototype as well as feedback from producer collaborators. Objective 2 will be carried out by expanding previously conducted material characterization trials of commercial lay flat irrigation tubing (poly pipe). The material thickness variation and tensile properties of the commercially available pipe will be examined to understand the response of the piping to both automatic hole insertion as well as the stresses related to discharging high volumes of irrigation water through different shaped openings. Objective 3 will be carried out using high performance computing resources to understand the flow characteristics of irrigation water through different shaped openings. The automatic hole puncher inserts holes which are elliptical instead of circular and therefore stress concentration on the piping are different and the flow through the holes appears different. Field trials have demonstrated more laminar flow, but the elliptical holes also result in water exiting the tubing at an oblique angle rather than perpendicular to the main flow in the tubing. Understanding this flow requires significant computational fluid dynamics and will result in feedback to the positioning of the hole in the tubing to ensure water is applied to the correct location in the field.