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5.3.5: The Scheduling Coefficient

  • Page ID
    44398
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    Another term that is an index of irrigation uniformity and efficiency is the scheduling coefficient (Solomon, 1988). It is commonly used for a description of turf sprinkler systems. It is used to calculate how long a system needs to apply water with the realization that the water application will not be perfectly uniform. For example, if the goal is to apply 0.5 in of water and the sprinkler system applies 0.25 in/hr, it would take 2 h to apply the desired depth if the water were distributed uniformly across the irrigated area. However, it usually is not! Thus, to adequately irrigate the desired proportion of the lawn, the sprinkler must be run longer than 2 hr. Assuming that 90% adequacy is the goal, the scheduling coefficient (SC) is calculated as:

    \(SC = \frac{d_z}{d_{LQ}}\) (5.13)

    As you can see, SC is simply the inverse of DU. The SC indicates how much longer an irrigation system will need to run in order to account for non-uniformity.

    Example 5.4

    A sod farm sprinkler system was tested and shown to have a DU of 0.80. If the average depth caught in the cans (dz) was 1.5 in and the sprinkler had been running for 5 h, determine the scheduling coefficient (SC), the dLQ, and the number of hours the sprinkler would need to run to achieve the same result if the pattern had been perfectly uniform.

    Find: dLQ and SC

    Time if uniformity had been perfect

    Solution:

    \(d_{LQ} = (DU)(d_z)\) (Eq. 5.8)

    \(d_{LQ} = (0.8)(1.5 \text{ in}) = 1.2 \text{ in}\)

    \(SC = \frac{d_z}{d_{LQ}}\) (Eq. 5.13)

    \(SC = \frac{1.5}{1.2} = 1.25\)

    An SC of 1.25 indicates that the sprinkler had to run 25% longer because of uneven distribution. Thus, with perfect uniformity, the time to operate would have been:

    Time = 5 h /1.25 = 4 h


    5.3.5: The Scheduling Coefficient is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.