Abstract: The purpose of this project is to analyze the function of a lawn sprinkler and the way it works.

We will also include the role of Fluid Dynamics in determining the necessary flow rates for the sprinkler to give desired outputs. The project will also include a LABVIEW program which will determine the actual and theoretical values of the output velocities from the sprinkler and will calculate the percentage error in the values determined.

First, we pick a stationary lawn sprinkler to do our studies with. The sprinkler has one vertical inlet and four horizontal outputs. The four output arms of the sprinkler are perpendicular to each other and have the same shape; thus we will do our output calculations on one arm and then multiply the values by four for convenience. By using the AutoCad program, we draw the sprinkler and it looks like this:

Fig. 1 3D View of the Sprinkler

Fig. 2 Top View of the Sprinkler

Fig. 3 Side View of the Sprinkler The inlet area of the sprinkler A1 = 3.141 x 10-4 m3 The exit area of each nozzle of the sprinkler A2 = 2.827 x 10-5 m3 In order to calculate the flow rate of the water (Q) entering the sprinkler from the inlet, we bring a 2 liters bottle of water and fill it from the water source. By measuring the time required for the bottle to be completely filled (2 liters), we can determine the inlet flow rate by the following equation: Qin (m3/s) = 2 liters * 10-3/ t1 (Eq.1)

We can also determine the actual value of the exit flow rate from each nozzle by the same equation: Qout (m3/s) = 2 liters * 10-3/ t2 (Eq.2)

Where t1 and t2 are the time required for the 2 liter bottle to be completely filled from the inlet and the exit respectively.

Now that we have determined the flow rates we can determine the velocities by the following equation: Q = A*V (Eq.3)

Where A is the area, and V is the velocity; thus we can calculate the inlet velocities and the exit actual velocities by rearranging Eq.3 to give the following Vin = Qin/A1 Vout Actual = Qout/A2 (Eq.4) (Eq.5)

Now we assume that the flow is steady and that the fluid used, which is water, is incompressible we can use the equation: Qin = Qout And hence the equation: Qin = 4*A2*Vout Theoretical (Eq.7) (Eq.6)

By rearranging Eq.7 we can calculate the theoretical value of the output velocity Vout Theoretical from the following equation: Vout Theoretical = Qin / 4*A2 (Eq.8)

We conducted the experiment on the sprinkler 8 times by using 8 different values of the time of flow in and we got 8 values for each time for the flow out and the results where as the following:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Tin 10.6 sec 8.9 sec 7.7 sec 6.5 sec 5.8 sec 5.2 sec 4.4 sec 3.6 sec

Tout 46.5 sec 39.34 sec 33.79 sec 28.89 sec 25.25 sec 23.37 sec 19.34 sec 15.96 sec

In order to ease our calculations we created a LABVIEW program to calculate for us the desired values of velocities and flow rates. We connected the block diagram as the following:

And the front panel will look like this:

By entering the 8 different experiments conducted we will get the following results: Tin 1 10.6 sec 2 8.9 sec 3 7.7 sec 4 6.5 sec 5 5.8 sec 6 5.2 sec 7 4.4 sec 8 3.6 sec Qin 1.887 x 10-4 m3/s 2.247 x 10-4 m3/s 2.597 x 10-4 m3/s 3.077 x 10-4 m3/s 3.448 x 10-4 m3/s 3.846 x 10-4 m3/s 4.545 x 10-4 m3/s 5.556 x 10-4 m3/s Vin 0.6006 m/s 0.715 m/s 0.826 m/s 0.979 m/s 1.098 m/s 1.224 m/s 1.447 m/s 1.768 m/s Tout 46.5 sec 39.3 sec 33.7 sec 28.8 sec 25.2 sec 23.3 sec 19.3 sec 15.9 sec Qout Actual 4.301 x 10-5 m3/s 5.089 x 10-5 m3/s 5.935 x 10-5 m3/s 6.944 x 10-5 m3/s 7.937x 10-5 m3/s 8.584 x 10-5 m3/s 1.036 x 10-4 m3/s 1.258 x 10-4 m3/s Vout Vout Actual Theoretical 1.521 m/s 1.668 m/s 1.8 m/s 2.099 m/s 2.456 m/s 2.807 m/s 3.036 m/s 3.665 m/s 4.449 m/s 1.987 m/s 2.297 m/s 2.721 m/s 3.049 m/s 3.401 m/s 4.019 m/s 4.912 m/s Percentage Error 91.18 % 90.59% 91.39 % 90.28% 92.06% 89.27% 91.19% 90.57%

We input the error percentage values on the Matlab program and we use the cftool in order to find a fitting for the graph:

Results: SSE: 4.735, R-square: 0.04125, Adjusted R-square: -0.1185, RMSE: 0.8883 This indicates that the difference between the error values is nearly negligible. Also the percentage error which has an average of 90.81 is very reasonable and is due to the assumptions taken of steady flow and incompressibility.