African Pivot
Saves $17,000 In Earthworks
Location: Mozambique, Africa
Field Area: 69 ha or 173 acres
Irrigation: Centre Pivot over furrows
Crops: Sugarcane
Background
This Center Pivot on greenfield site, requires reliable surface water drainage to allow timely machine access, operations and less compaction particularly during mechanized harvesting.
Existing Topography

Existing Topography Drainage Analysis

Design Parameters

Proposed Topography

Red polygon is an example of OptiSurface design subzone. In this case, it defines where the designer wishes the ridge of the field to be. Water drains away from this ridge. This is an input to the OptiSurface 2Way Calculation engine.
Proposed Cut/Fill Map

Furrow Profile

Conclusion
An OptiSurface 2Way design has been calculated to drain water in two directions away from the natural ridge that runs through the centre of the field. A special 'ridge' zone is used by the designer to define the alignment from which the water will run both ways. Significant smoothing was applied in the main slope and cross slope directions and maximum grades were limited to 2%.
This resulted in smooth design surface with earthworks of 355 m3/ha (188 yd3/acre). If the client wants to reduce earthworks by loosening the design constraints, then removing the all slope constraints except the 0.1% minimum main slope can reduce the earthworks to 150m3/ha (78 yd3/acre).
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