Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Effective pesticide applications are needed to assure the quality and economic competitiveness of fruit production and lower the risk of spray drift. Experimental studies have shown that better spray coverage and less driftability require an understanding of the transport of spray droplets within turbulent airflows in the orchard and the interaction between droplet dynamics and tree canopies. This study developed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to predict pesticide flows in the orchard and spray drift discharged from an air-assisted orchard sprayer. The model represented the transport of spray droplets as well as droplets captured by tree canopies, which were modeled as a conical porous model and branched tree model. Validation of the CFD model was accomplished by comparing the CFD results with field measurements. Spray depositions inside tree canopies and at off-target locations were in good agreement with the measurements. The resulting data presented that 38.6%∼42.3% of the sprayed droplets were delivered to the tree canopies while 13.6%∼20.1% were drifted out of the orchard, part of them reached farther than 200 m from the orchard. The study demonstrates that CFD model can be used to evaluate spray application performance and spray drift potential.