Performance Evaluation of a Wheel Operated Boom Sprayer

A wheel operated boom sprayer working on the principle of eccentric mechanism was evaluated on the independent parameters like nozzle type i.e. flat fan nozzle, hollow cone nozzle and flood jet nozzle in combination with the three different heights of the boom (H₁=400 mm, H₂=500 mm and H₃= 600 mm) and three different type of boom carrying two, three and four nozzles. The dependent parameters studied were nozzle discharge (l h^-1), swath width (cm), spray overlap (%), spray coverage (%), size of droplets (µm) and droplet density (droplets/cm²). The study involved the use of dropleaf software, which analysed the spray pattern obtained on water sensitive papers (WSP) used during the study to measure various spraying characteristics of the sprayer. The nozzle discharge (l h^-1), swath width (cm) and size of droplets (µm) increased with the increase in the number of nozzles on boom while as the spray overlap (%) and droplet density (droplets cm^-2) decreased with an increase in the number of nozzles on boom. The swath width, spray overlap (%) and size of the droplets (µm) increased with an increase in the height of the boom while as nozzle discharge (l h^-1), spray coverage (%) and droplet density (droplets cm^-2) decreased with the increase in the height of boom.