Effect of Geometric Variation of Root Fillet on the Flow Characteristic of a Transonic Compressor Rotor

The effects of root fillet on the flow behavior of high loading compressor rotor tends to be much more crucial in practice,and it’s necessary to explore the internal relations between the geometric effects of root fillet and the flow behaviors of rotor blade.Therefore,eight types of root fillet with different radius were designed and installed around the blade root of NASA Rotor67.With the aids of fillet,the corner separation near suction side of blade root has been suppressed significantly in that the root fillet reconstructs the circumferential bending distributon of the suction-side curve from leading edge to trailing edge,and reduces the genmetric turning angle in the latter part of root section near trailing edge.However,apart from the improvement of corner flow characteristic caused by root fillet,both the tip flow deterioration and the decrease of stall margin occur in the new rotors,which indicates an indirect correlation between tip flow characteristic and root fillet exists indeed in the three-dimensional flowfields of transonic rotor.Actually,by means of the new radial pressure equilibrium affected by root fillet,a larger radius of root fillet contributes to much larger blade loading and stronger leakage flow in tip region of compressor rotor.As a result,a monotonic decrease of stall margin was present in the transonic rotor with increase of the root fillet radius.Subsequently,the positive bending of blade tip was introduced to deal with the negative effect caused by the root fillet indirectly.Combined with the effects of root fillet and positive tip-bending on the radial pressure equilibrium existing in channels,both the radial and streamwise loading distributions tend to be much more reasonable in new rotors,and the static pressure difference in former 1/3 chord of blade tip has decreased clearly which benefits to reduce the strength of leakage flow in tip region.Therefore,the flow deterioration in tip region of transonic rotor induced by root fillet has been well suppressed,with an obvious improvement of overall performance occurring in new rotors.

Natural variation of hormone levels in Arabidopsis roots and correlations with complex root architecture

Studies on natural variation are an important tool to unravel the genetic basis of quantitative traits in plants. Despite the significant roles of phytohormones in plant development, including root architecture, hardly any studies have been done to investigate natural variation in endogenous hormone levels in plants. Therefore, in the present study a range of hormones were quantified in root extracts of thirteen Arabidopsis thaliana accessions using a ultra performance liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Root system architecture of the set of accessions was quantified, using a new parameter （mature root unit） for complex root systems, and correlated with the phytohormone data. Significant variations in phytohormone levels among the accessions were detected, but were remarkably small, namely less than three-fold difference between extremes. For cytokinins, relatively larger variations were found for ribosides and glucosides, as compared to the free bases. For root phenotyping, length-related traits--lateral root length and total root length--showed larger variations than lateral root number-related ones. For root architecture, antagonistic interactions between hormones, for example, indole-3-acetic acid to trans-zeatin were detected in correlation analysis. These findings provide conclusive evidence for the presence of natural variation in phytohormone levels in Arabidopsis roots, suggesting that quantitative genetic analyses are feasible.

Root production, mortality and turnover in soil profiles as affected by clipping in a temperate grassland on the Loess Plateau

Aims Clipping or mowing for hay,as a prevalent land-use practice,is considered to be an important component of global change.Root production and turnover in response to clipping have great implications for the plant survival strategy and grassland ecosystem carbon processes.However,our knowledge about the clipping effect on root dynamics is mainly based on root living biomass,and limited by the lack of spatial and temporal observations.The study aim was to investigate the effect of clipping on seasonal variations in root length production and mortality and their distribution patterns in different soil layers in semiarid grassland on the Loess Plateau.Methods Clipping was performed once a year in June to mimic the local spring livestock grazing beginning from 2014.The minirhizotron technique was used to monitor the root production,mortality and turnover rate at various soil depths(0–10,10–20,20–30 and 30–50 cm)in 2014(from 30 May to 29 October)and 2015(from 22 April to 25 October).Soil temperature and moisture in different soil layers were also measured during the study period.Important Findings Our results showed that:(i)Clipping significantly decreased the cumulative root production(P<0.05)and increased the cumulative root mortality and turnover rates of the 0–50 cm soil profile for both years.(ii)Clipping induced an immediate and sharp decrease in root length production and an increase in root length mortality in all soil layers.However,with plant regrowth,root production increased and root mortality decreased gradually,with the root production at a depth of 30–50 cm even exceeding the control in September–October 2014 and April–May 2015.(iii)Clipping mainly reduced root length production and increased root length mortality in the upper 0–20 cm soil profile with rapid root turnover.However,roots at deeper soil layers were either little influenced by clipping or exhibited an opposite trend with slower turnover rate compared with the upper soil profile,leading to the downward transport of root production and living root biomass.These findings indicate that roots in deeper soil layers tend to favour higher root biomass and longer fine root life spans to maximize the water absorption efficiency under environmental stress,and also suggest that short-term clipping would reduce the amount of carbon through fine root litter into the soil,especially in the shallow soil profile.