Sunday, February 18, 2018

How The Functions Of A Center Pivot Irrigation System Are Carried Out

By Steven West


Glancing casually out of a window on a plane you are riding on, you might have seen circular figures below. Those are the fields, rice fields to be exact. You might find it astonishing but yes, they are circular in shape when you get to see them from above.

Some of you might be surprised about that fact and found it funny. When you got to see such things for the first time in your entire life, you might wonder about them. Hey, you are living in a world where center pivot irrigation system exists. Compared to the traditional way of irrigating rice fields, this is way much better and more convenient because it does not need much human manipulation and intervention after the first setup.

It irrigates in a circular motion around the central point or pivot point. It is versatile for it can add fertilizers, chemicals, herbicides, and of course, water. Thus, an irrigation process becomes efficient. It only takes one machine for a number of functions to be performed.

For ten years or more, this had become widespread and mostly used by many people in their farming or agricultural activities. It minimized waste of water and at the same time, increased the harvest or yields. However, it can be seemingly complex because of its great dependence on both conventional and modern technologies which are said to embody the system itself.

It is amazing to note how this system functions. To do so, its components or parts are of a great essence. The earlier version consisted only of three basic but essential parts namely the pipes, sprinklers, and pumps. These were gathered by the creator, assembled, and raised off the firm ground.

The inventor eventually provided support on the old version with the new components such as the central pivot points, the control panel, the drive units, the spans, the tower boxes, and LRDU or the last regular drive units. That is why this machine lies in technology that develops other functions for these components.

Most of its models are operated by electricity. Using a public electric source or generator, using this machinery is made possible. An alternating current with one hundred twenty or four hundred eighty volts is essential for it to operate. The one hundred twenty VAC is used to power up the movement of its LRDU, pivot, and safety circuits. For its drive unit to make a move, there is such thing as power circuits that gives these units the drive.

This system consists of a panel, or shall they call it a control panel, which is known to perform most of the basic but important functions. It is the central command of an entire machine, sending signals to the pivot point and LRDU. It may be varied from one model to the other but it does not matter after all because they all do the same thing, regardless of what type they may be.

The movement of last regular drive unit or for short, LRDU can be forward or the opposite. This leads the pivot which is continuously making movements until the next tower type box is in the process of activation caused by an apparatus that establishes a connection between the last piece of a span and second to last piece of a tower. As a pivot point moves down and continues doing so, all other towers will also move.




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