PDPA Laser-Based Characterization of Agricultural Spray Nozzles

Characterising agricultural sprays is a critical factor when investigating and predicting the spray drift, deposition on plants, spray coverage and biological efficacy. Hence to underpin a research project to predict spray drift, a measuring protocol to enable consistent characterisation of spray from nozzles used in agriculture using a Phase Doppler Particle Analyser (PDPA) was developed. The set-up measures droplet sizes and velocities based on light-scattering principles. It comprises a controlled climate room, a spray unit, a three-dimensional automated positioning system, and an Aerometrics PDPA 1D system. This paper presents a detailed description of the measuring set-up along with some experimental results. In total, 32 nozzle-pressure combinations were tested and spray quality categorized based on the British Crop Protection Council (BCPC) classification scheme using the measured droplet size spectra . The results confirmed the importance of nozzle type and flow rate on droplet size and their velocity The measurements will be used as an input for a Computational Fluid Dynamics drift-prediction model and to categorize nozzles based on their relative driftability.

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