Sprinkler irrigation is promoted due to its remarkable advantages in water conservation, but the high energy consumption limits its development in a situation of energy scarcity. In order to determine the energy consumption of a fixed spray-plate sprinkler (FSPS), its discharge and initial trajectory velocity were investigated using a particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses. A nozzle diameter of 4.76 mm was used under windless conditions. Overall, good agreement between simulation results and experimental values was obtained. On the premise that the simulation method produced high accuracy, a series of simulations was performed with different nozzle diameters. The water distribution pattern, stream trajectory velocity and kinetic energy dissipation were analyzed. The results show that the jet produced at the nozzle is split by grooves after it hits the plate, with separation occurring earlier with decreasing nozzle diameter. The area of the flow cross-section of the outlet is mainly influenced by nozzle diameter rather than working pressure. The initial trajectory velocity of the grooves increases logarithmically with increasing working pressure. A high working pressure may not cause large kinetic energy dissipation. The dissipation rate of the FSPS ranged from 28.01–50.97%, i.e., a large kinetic energy rate was observed. To reduce this energy dissipation and improve water use efficiency, the structure of the FSPS should be optimized in further research.

Liquid—liquid mixing is commonly observed in many applications such as the chlorination of water supplies and the agricultural fertigation. In order to study the mixing law of water-chlorine or water-fertilizer in a turbulent pipeline, saline was selected as a tracer injected into the pipeline. In this paper, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software was employed to study flow fields in water-saline pipelines. Four variates (mixing ratio δ, pipe diameter D, volume flow rate in the main pipe Q, saline density ρ_s) were considered to investigate the effects of multiple variates on mixing uniformity. The coefficient of variation (COV) was selected as the evaluation index of mixing uniformity, effective mixing length (L_EML, the distance from the saline inlet to the fully mixed position) was chosen to quantitatively analyze the fully mixed position of water and saline in pipelines. The results of this numerical model agree well with experimental measurements and it shows that this model can effectively predict the concentration field of water and saline in the pipeline. Based on the experimental and simulated results, it was found that for the fixed mixing ratio, saline density and volume flow rate, the values of L_EML increased significantly with increasing pipe diameters. Furthermore, dimensional analysis (D-A) was adopted to examine the influences of the four variates on L_EML, and their correlation coefficient of the curve-fitting equation was calculated to be 0.996.

The sediment accumulation in drainage pipes has long been recognized as a significant concern in the environmental field. This study addresses sediment accumulation in drainage pipes by introducing an innovative bioinspired approach using various shapes and angles of plates for long-term sediment reduction. Through experiments and numerical simulations, the velocity field, the turbulent kinetic energy, the head loss, and the dynamic pressure distribution in the pipeline with plates are analyzed. Results demonstrate significant increases in local velocity, dynamic pressure, and turbulence energy due to the presence of plates. The sediment reduction performance shows a positive correlation with the angle for folded plates and a non-linear relation with curvature for curved plates. Notably, the superior performance of folded plates is attributed to their exceptional ability to induce vortex formation. The head loss due to sediment reduction measures increases linearly as the angle and the curvature increase. Furthermore, the intentional induction of strong eddies and high shear flow using the undulating topography created by the locally installed folding plates in the pipeline was the main cause of sediment reduction. This novel approach holds promise for more efficient and sustainable sediment reduction in drainage systems.

The complex nonlinear and non-stationary features exhibited in hydrologic sequences make hydrological analysis and forecasting difficult. Currently, some hydrologists employ the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) method, a new time-frequency analysis method based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm, to decompose non-stationary raw data in order to obtain relatively stationary components for further study. However, the endpoint effect in CEEMDAN is often neglected, which can lead to decomposition errors that reduce the accuracy of the research results. In this study, we processed an original runoff sequence using the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) technique to obtain the extension sequence before utilizing CEEMDAN decomposition. Then, we compared the decomposition results of the original sequence, RBFNN extension sequence, and standard sequence to investigate the influence of the endpoint effect and RBFNN extension on the CEEMDAN method. The results indicated that the RBFNN extension technique effectively reduced the error of medium and low frequency components caused by the endpoint effect. At both ends of the components, the extension sequence more accurately reflected the true fluctuation characteristics and variation trends. These advances are of great significance to the subsequent study of hydrology. Therefore, the CEEMDAN method, combined with an appropriate extension of the original runoff series, can more precisely determine multi-time scale characteristics, and provide a credible basis for the analysis of hydrologic time series and hydrological forecasting.