High tunnels, or unheated plastic greenhouses, are becoming increasingly popular among organic vegetable growers across the United States. However, the intensive production typical of these systems presents soil health challenges, including salinization due to high fertilizer or compost inputs coupled with lack of rainfall to leach salts. Legume cover crops may improve soil health in high tunnels by reducing the need for external inputs, while adding organic matter. We tested the soil health effects of a winter hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth) cover crop used to replace fertilizer N in an organic tomato cropping system in high tunnels. Studies were replicated across three sites differing in climate and soil type (Kansas, Kentucky, and Minne

Geotechnical engineering like any other engineering field has to develop and cope with new technologies. This article intends to investigate the spatial relationships between soil’s liquid limit (LL), plasticity index (PI) and Liquidity index (LI) for particular zones of Sulaymaniyah City. The main objective is to study the ability to produce digital soil maps for the study area and determine regions of high expansive soil. Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation tool within the GIS (Geographic Information System) program was used to produce the maps. Data from 592 boreholes for LL and PI and 245 boreholes for LI were used for this study. Layers were allocated into three depth ranges (1 to 2, 2 to 4 and 4 to 6)

The present study develops an artificial neural network (ANN) to model an analysis and a simulation of the correlation between the average corrosion rate carbon steel and the effective parameter Reynolds number (Re), water concentration (Wc) % temperature (T o) with constant of PH 7 . The water, produced fom oil in Kirkuk oil field in Iraq from well no. k184-Depth2200ft., has been used as a corrosive media and specimen area (400 mm2) for the materials that were used as low carbon steel pipe. The pipes are supplied by Doura Refinery . The used flow system is all made of Q.V.F glass, and the circulation of the two –phase (liquid – liquid ) is affected using a Q.V.F pump .The input parameters of the model consists of Reynolds number , w

Galvanic corrosion of stainless steel 316 (SS316) and carbon steel (CS) coupled in 5% wt/v sulfuric acid solution at agitation velocity was investigated. The galvanic behavior of coupled metals was also studied using zero resistance ammeter (ZRA) method. The effects of agitation velocity, temperature, and time on galvanic corrosion current and loss in weight of both metals in both free corrosion and galvanic corrosion were investigated. The trends of open circuit potential (OCP) of each metal and galvanic potential (E_g) of the couple were, also, determined. Results showed that SS316 was cathodic relative to CS in galvanic couple and its OCP was much more positive than that of CS for all investigated ranges of

For more than a decade, externally bonded carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites successfully utilized in retrofitting reinforced concrete structural elements. The function of CFRP reinforcement in increasing the ductility of reinforced concrete (RC) beam is essential in such members. Flexural and shear behaviors, ductility, and confinement were the main studied properties that used the CFRP as a strengthening material. However, limited attention has been paid to investigate the energy absorption of torsion strengthening of concrete members, especially two-span concrete beams. Hence, the target of this work is to investigate the effectiveness of CFRP-strengthening technique with regard to energy absorption of two-span RC

In this study, we used Bayesian method to estimate scale parameter for the normal distribution. By considering three different prior distributions such as the square root inverted gamma (SRIG) distribution and the non-informative prior distribution and the natural conjugate family of priors. The Bayesian estimation based on squared error loss function, and compared it with the classical estimation methods to estimate the scale parameter for the normal distribution, such as the maximum likelihood estimation and th