Perennial biofuel and cover crops systems are important for enhancing soil health and can provide numerous soil, agricultural, and environmental benefits. The study objective was to investigate the effects of cover crops and biofuel crops on soil hydraulic properties relative to traditional management for claypan soils. The study site included selected management practices: cover crop (CC) and no cover crop (NC) with corn/soybean rotation, switchgrass (SW), and miscanthus (MI). The CC mixture consisted of cereal rye, hairy vetch, and Austrian winter pea. The research site was located at Bradford Research Center in Missouri, USA, and was implemented on a Mexico silt loam. Intact soil cores (76‐mm diam. by 76‐mm long) were taken from the 0–10, 10–20, 20–30, and 30–40 cm depths with three plot replicates and two sub‐samples per plot replicate per depth. Soil hydraulic properties evaluated for each sample included: saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat), water retention, bulk density, and pore size distributions. Results showed with the test of Duncan's least significant differences that treatments of MI (1.18 Mg m−3) and SW (1.21 Mg m−3) had lower values of bulk density averaging across soil depth than CC (1.27 Mg m−3) and NC (1.31 Mg m). Management systems significantly increased Ksat with the biofuel treatments at 0–10 cm compared to NC system. The MI management showed a significant increase in macroporosity and fine mesoporosity as compared to other management systems. Slight changes have occurred in the measured soil physical properties for CC system compared to NC plots. Overall, increasing soil organic matter from more plant roots from long‐term biofuel cropping systems can improve soil water storage and crop productivity.
The aim of this research is to develop mechanical properties of a new aluminium-lithium-copper alloy. This alloy prepared under control atmosphere by casting in a permanent metal mould. The microstructure was examined and mechanical properties were tested before and after heat treatment to study the influence of heat treatment on its mechanical properties including; modulus of elasticity, tensile strength, impact, and fatigue. The results showed that the modulus of elasticity of the prepared alloy is higher than standard alloy about 2%. While the alloy that heat treated for 6 h and cooled in water, then showed a higher ultimate tensile stress comparing with as-cast alloy. The homogenous heat treatment gives best fatigue
... Show MoreThis paper displays a survey about the laboratory routine core analysis study on ten sandstone core samples taken from Zubair Reservoir/West Quarna Oil Field. The Petrophysical properties of rock as porosity, permeability, grain's size, roundness and sorting, type of mineral and volumes of shales inside the samples were tested by many apparatus in the Petroleum Technology Department/ University of Technology such as OFITE BLP-530 Gas Porosimeter, PERG-200TM Gas Permeameter and liquid Permeameter, GeoSpec2 apparatus (NMR method), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and OFITE Spectral Gamma Ray Logger apparatus. By comparing all the results of porosity and permeability measured by these instruments, it is clear a significant vari
... Show MoreOverlapped have been prepared from epoxy resin material added to carbon Nanotube and percentages weight (0.1, 0.05, 0.01) % Studied the mechanical properties of the composite (bending, tensile an d hardness) has been found that the Flexural and tensile modulus of the composites were higher than the pure epoxy resin this may be due to the high mechanical strength of carbon nano tube (CNT). The hardness of the epoxy carbon Nanotube composites increased and the reason is due to increased overlap and stacking between the additives and material basis, which reduces the movement of polymer molecules leading to increased resistance to scratching material and cutting, will become more resistance to plastic deformation.
The effects of BaCl2 dopant on the optical properties of poly (vinyl alcohol) have been investigated. Pure and BaCl2 doped PVA films were prepared using solvent casting method. These films were characterized using UV/VIS technique in order to estimate the kind of transition which was found to be indirect transition. The value of the optical energy gap was decrease with increasing dopant concentration.
Refractive index, extinction coefficient and Urbach tail have been also investigated; it was found that all the above parameters affects by doping.
This study investigates the possibility of using waste plastic as one of the components of expired lead-acid batteries to produce lightweight concrete. Different percentages of lead-acid battery plastic were used in the production of lightweight concrete. The replacements were (70, 80 and 100%) by volume of the fine and coarse aggregate. Results demonstrated that a reduction of approximately 23.6% to 35% in the wet density was observed when replacement of 70% to 100% of the natural aggregate by lead-acid battery plastic. Also, the compressive strength decreased slightly with the increase in plastic content at different curing ages of 7, 28, 60, 90, 120 days. The lowest value of compressive strength was (20.7 MPa) for (wa
... Show MoreThe eff ect of partial substitution for lanthanum (La) on the structural properties of the compound Y1-xLaxBa4Cu7O15+δ were studied. The variation of (x) are x=0.1, 0.2 and 0.3, which was synthesized by solid state reaction method. The mixed powder was pressed with pressure (7 ton / cm2) as a disc (1.5 cm) diameter and a thickness of (0.25 to 0.3 cm). The samples were sintering by 120 °C / hour with a changing rate from room temperature to 850 ° C through 72 hours. XRD analysis using to calculate crystal size, strain and degree of crystallinity. It was found all samples have orthorhombic structure and change of structure with increasing lanthanum concentration. It was shown that the change lanthanum concentrations of all our samp
... Show MoreThin films of ZnO nano crystalline doped with different concentrations (0, 6, 9, 12, and 18 )wt. % of copper were deposited on a glass substrate via pulsed laser deposition method (PLD). The properties of ZnO: Cu thin-nanofilms have been studied by absorbing UV-VIS, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopes (AFM). UV-VIS spectroscopy was used to determine the type and value of the optical energy gap, while X-ray diffraction was used to examine the structure and determine the size of the crystals. Atomic force microscopes were used to study the surface formation of precipitated materials. The UV-VIS spectroscopy was used to determine the type and value of the optical energy gap.
The paper presents the results of the research on the influence of the adjuvant concentration on the size of the drops produced by the spray nozzles of agricultural sprayers. For the tests, adjuvant Normaton with the composition of total nitrogen, amide nitrogen (N-NH2) and phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) was used. The adjuvant was added to the water taken from the municipal water supply system of the city of Lublin. The tests were carried out for three concentrations, i.e. 75%, 100%, and 125% of the adjuvant concentration recommended by the manufacturer, and water without the adjuvant. The surface tension of water with adjuva
