IIHR's Tipping-Bucket Rain Gauge Calibrator, IIHR, College of Engineering, The University of Iowa

	IIHR- Hydroscience & Engineering College of Engineering, The University of Iowa

The calibration system, which is located at our Sierra Court Facility, consists of a personal computer, a programmable pump, a digital scale, a water tank and some wires and elastic pipes. The computer controls all the equipment through its serial port.

The pump (middle) can be programmed to deliver water from 0.06 to 220 mL/min. The data from pump and digital scale are collected automatically. The range of the digital scale is 0-2 kg.

Computer-controlled tipping-bucket rain gauge calibrator

The pump is calibrated first, by pumping nominal quantities of distilled water in a fixed time interval into beaker, situated on the digital scale. The computer then reads the digital scale and infers the actual flow rate from the pump.

With a pump calibration curve in place, the tipping-bucket is calibrated by pumping accurately-known amounts of water into the tipping-bucket in different intervals, simulating different rainfall rates. The number of tips for every simulated rain rate is counted and fed into the computer.

More Information

For more information about the IIHR tipping-bucket rain gauge calibrator contact Dr. Anton Kruger or Prof. Witold Krajewski.