Closure to "Simple relationships for the optimal design of paired drip laterals on uniform slopes" by Giorgio Baiamonte

Abstract

The author appreciates the interest of the discussers of the paper “Simple Relationships for the Optimal Design of Paired Drip Laterals on Uniform Slopes” and wants to express his gratitude to Joaquin Monserrat and Javier Barragan for the opportunity to discuss the issues they raised. In their discussion, they questioned the use of analytical relationships to derive the design variables that are required for the optimal design of paired sloped laterals. This paper detected the Best Manifold Position (BMP = 0.24) to design optimal paired laterals and, as the discussers mentioned, allows the methodology introduced by Baiamonte et al. (2015) to be applied. Thus, the issues they questioned and this closure could be extended to both papers. The main issue they discussed (Issue A) consists in the non-suitability of the proposed relationships for a fixed pressure head variation, hvar, which the author considered. The discussers also pointed out that the criterion to fix hvar is usually established for the whole irrigation subunit compounded by many laterals and one manifold, and not just for one lateral as in the paper (Issue B). Finally, an error was detected by the discussers (Issue C). These issues, denoted by A, B and C, will be discussed in the following paragraphs.