The Effect of Water Saving and Production Increment by Drip Irrigation Schedules

Drip irrigation system can achieve high uniformity. When the system is designed for uniformity coefficient equal or more than 70%, the water application in the field can be expressed as a normal distribution and further simplified to a linear distribution. This paper will describe the irrigation scheduling parameters, percent of deficit, application efficiency and coefficient of variation by simple mathematical model. Using this effective model and the irrigation application, the total yield affected by the total water application for different uniformity of irrigation application can be determined. More over, this paper uses the cost of water, price of yield, uniformity of the drip irrigation system, crop response to water application and environmental concerns of pollution and contamination to determine the optimal irrigation schedule. A case study shows that the optimal irrigation schedule can achieve the effect of water saving and production increment compared with the conventional irrigation schedule in which the whole field is fully irrigated. Key words drip irrigation - linear cumulative frequency curve - optimal irrigation schedule - water saving - production increment CLC number TV 139.1 Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (59379407)Biography: QIU Yuan-feng (1973-), male, Ph. D, research direction: water saving irrigation theory and techniques.

Hybrid reliability model for fatigue reliability analysis of steel bridges

A kind of hybrid reliability model is presented to solve the fatigue reliability problems of steel bridges. The cumulative damage model is one kind of the models used in fatigue reliability analysis. The parameter characteristics of the model can be described as probabilistic and interval. The two-stage hybrid reliability model is given with a theoretical foundation and a solving algorithm to solve the hybrid reliability problems. The theoretical foundation is established by the consistency relationships of interval reliability model and probability reliability model with normally distributed variables in theory. The solving process is combined with the definition of interval reliability index and the probabilistic algorithm. With the consideration of the parameter characteristics of the S-N curve, the cumulative damage model with hybrid variables is given based on the standards from different countries. Lastly, a case of steel structure in the Neville Island Bridge is analyzed to verify the applicability of the hybrid reliability model in fatigue reliability analysis based on the AASHTO.

Active steering control strategy for articulated vehicles

To improve maneuverability and stability of articulated vehicles, we design an active steering controller, including tractor and trailer controllers, based on linear quadratic regulator(LQR) theory. First, a three-degree-of-freedom(3-DOF) model of the tractor-trailer with steered trailer axles is built. The simulated annealing particle swarm optimization(SAPSO) algorithm is applied to identify the key parameters of the model under specified vehicle speed and steering wheel angle. Thus, the key parameters of the simplified model can be obtained according to the vehicle conditions using an online look-up table and interpolation. Simulation results show that vehicle parameter outputs of the simplified model and Truck Sim agree well, thus providing the ideal reference yaw rate for the controller. Then the active steering controller of the tractor and trailer based on LQR is designed to follow the desired yaw rate and minimize their side-slip angle of the center of gravity(CG) at the same time. Finally, simulation tests at both low speed and high speed are conducted based on the Truck Sim-Simulink program. The results show significant effects on the active steering controller on improving maneuverability at low speed and lateral stability at high speed for the articulated vehicle. The control strategy is applicable for steering not only along gentle curves but also along sharp curves.