Modeling and Prediction of the Uniformity of Spray Liquid Coverage from Flat Fan Spray Nozzles

The effectiveness and quality of agricultural spraying largely depends on the technical efficiency of the nozzles installed in agricultural sprayers. The uniform spraying of plants results in a decrease in the amount of pesticides used in agricultural production and affects environmental safety. Both newly developed sprayers and those currently in use need quality control as well as an assessment of the performance of the spraying process, especially its uniformity. However, the models applied presently do not ensure accurate estimates or predictions of the spray liquid coverage uniformity of the treated surface. Generally, the distribution of the atomized liquid quantity is symmetrical and leptokurtic, which means that it does not fit well to the commonly used standard distribution. Therefore, there is a need to develop and design new tools for the evaluation, modeling, and prediction of such a process. The research problem studied in the present work was to find a new model for the distribution of atomized liquid quantity that could provide capabilities better than have been available so far to assess and predict the spraying process results. The research problem was solved through the formulation of a new function for the probability density distribution of sprayed liquid accumulation on the surface of the preset dimension size. The development of the new model was based on the results from a series of water atomization tests with an appropriate measurement device design based on the widely applied flat fan nozzles (AZ-MM type).