Re-engineering the sprinkler
A team of MIT engineers has described a novel way of controlling the flow of water in flexible tubes, a finding with implications for agricultural systems worldwide. Their research, published in the Journal of Mechanical Design, could reduce the energy demands of pulsating sprinklers used for irrigation. “Food and its relationship to water is one of the biggest problems in the world,” says Ruo-Qian Wang, a former postdoc at the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design who is now a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. “There is a clear need for efficient irrigation technologies that save money and conserve resources.” Wang co-authored the paper with three researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering: graduate student Teresa Lin, PhD candidate and Tata Fellow Pulkit Shamshery, and Assistant Professor Amos Winter. The model they propose could be especially useful in developing countries, where many farmers cultivate small plots of land without reliable access to the electricity grid....