LAUSR

Vertical impact and turbine drive sprinklers are the most widely used high-volume sprinklers with both solid set spray and hose-drawn traveler irrigator systems. Different mechanical structures and driving modes between the two types of sprinklers will inevitably lead to differences in spray performance, which may affect the adaptability of each sprinkler. Thus far, there are few comparative studies that have quantitatively analyzed the spray characteristics of the two types of gun sprinklers, resulting in the lack of guidance in sprinkler-type selection for both sprinkler system designers and farmers. In this paper, the vertical impact drive gun sprinkler (50PYC) and turbine drive gun sprinkler (HY50) were used to conduct a comparative analysis of water distribution and kinetic energy distribution between these two commonly-used sprinklers. The results show that the average radial application rate of 50PYC was 11.0%–35.9% higher than that of HY50 under fixed spray conditions. Under mobile spray conditions, the water distribution of the two gun sprinklers initially increased and then decreased as the distance from the travel lane increased, exhibiting a unimodal distribution. Both the cumulative irrigation depth and average radial application rate of 50PYC were significantly higher than those of HY50 in the spray area close to the travel lane. Under overlapping spraying conditions using two adjacent sprinklers of the same type, various working pressures and different spacing between sprinklers, the maximum distribution uniformity coefficients of the 50PYC gun sprinkler reached 80.5% to 87.8%, while the maximum distribution uniformity coefficients of the HY50 gun sprinkler were approximately 67.1% to 76.9% (5.3% to 13.5% lower than that of 50PYC). Under fixed spray conditions, the peak values of spray kinetic energy of the turbine drive-HY50 was about 1.5–2.7 times that of the 50PYC gun sprinkler under different working pressures. Under mobile spray conditions, the cumulative kinetic energy in the whole spray area of the HY50 gun sprinkler was about 1.5–2.4 times that of the 50PYC gun sprinkler. This quantitative study on two common types of sprinkler guns, vertical impact and turbine drive sprinklers, indicates that to comprehensively obtain greater irrigation benefits, soil and crop types, irrigation water quality, and economic and labor costs should also be taken into consideration when selecting between the two gun sprinklers.