Abstract:
Agriculture is a key driver of global biodiversity and economy. In the recent years, the over-exploitation of water resources, climate change and pollution have led to a global water crisis, exposing the agricultural sector to significant risks in both the short and long term. For these reasons, the development, and the optimization of the technologies to efficiently manage the water consumption are the main weapons to reduce the impact on this valuable resource. The main aim of this study is to assess the application of a digital model (DM) to agricultural operations to ensure the correct supply of water and nutrients to crops, minimizing the consumption of resources and increasing the efficiency of the water management. The simulation model of an irrigation network has been developed on Flownex, a 1D, concentrated-parameter fluid dynamics simulation software dedicated to network simulations. To model the drip irrigation system a specific characterization was carried out through fluid-dynamic simulation (ANSYS Fluent). The developed tool has emerged as an evaluable solution to apply the benefits of DT to agricultural applications. Indeed, the DM can reliably predict the performance of the system in terms of water distribution considering different operating conditions. Β© 2023 The Authors.
