Evaluation of various surface irrigation numerical simulation models

In this study, a zero-inertia model (ZIMOD) is presented to simulate all phases of border and furrow irrigation systems. The governing equations were discretized using a control volume of moving cells, by procedures reported in the literature for borders and for furrows. Later, the discretized equations were linearized by applying a Taylor series expansion according to the Newton-Raphson procedure, and then the algebraic linearized equations were iteratively solved using the Gaussian elimination technique. The ZIMOD was verified against several field experimental data and output of various numerical models in the SIRMOD package. Computational times, errors in predicting advance and recession trajectories, and estimated runoff and infiltrated volumes were compared. All models used in the comparative analysis predicted the advance and recession times and the infiltrated and runoff volumes satisfactory. However, models in the SIRMOD package were computationally faster than ZIMOD.