Roll Gap Crown Adjustment Characteristics of 1700 mm Cold Rolling Mills

The 4-hi cold mill is one of the key wide strip tandem cold rolling mills and has many advantages and characteristics. The mill type is the most important, fundamental and long-term effective factor for the strip shape control. Many advanced mill types such as CVC-4, HCW and PC-4, etc are created based on the conventional four-roll mill. The factors of mill type which affect the deformation of roll system, such as strip width, rolling force, bending force, work roll diameter, backup diameter and so on, arc studied how to affect roll gap crown. It provides a good foundation lbr improving the shape performance of mill.

Understanding bark thickness variations for Araucaria angustifolia in southern Brazil

This study aimed to understand bark thickness variations of Araucaria angustifolia(Bertol.)Kuntze trees growing in natural forest remnants in southern Brazil,and their relationship with quantitative and qualitative attributes.Bark thickness must be accurately estimated in order to determine timber volume stocks.This is an important variable for the sustainable management and conservation of araucaria forests.In spite of its importance and visibility,bark thickness variations have not been evaluated for this key species in southern Brazil.A total of 104 trees were selected,and their qualitative and quantitative attributes such as diameter at breast height(D_(BH)),height(H),crown base height(C_(BH)),crown length(C_(L)),social position(S_(P)),stoniness(S_(T)),position on the relief(P_(R)),vitality(V_T)and branch arrangement(B_(A))were measured.The trees were categorized into two groups:red bark or gray bark.Regression analysis and artificial neural networks(ANN)were used for modelling bark thickness.The results indicate that:(1)bark thickness showed good correlation to D_(BH),with 0.76 as coefficient of determination(RS_P),0.540 as Mean Absolute Error(M_(AE))and 22.4 root-meansquare error in percentage(R_(MSE%));(2)the trend changed according to bark colour,with significant differences for the intersection(_0–Pr>F:p=0.0124)and slope(β_(1)–Pr>F:p=0.0126)of bark thickness curves between groups;(3)the highest correlation of bark thickness was found with:D_(BH)(ρ=0.88),H(ρ=0.58),C_(BH)(ρ=0.46),S_(P)(ρ=-0.52),and B_(A)(ρ=-0.32);(4)modelling with ANN confirmed high adjustment(R^(2)=0.99)and accuracy(R_(MSE%)=3.0)of the estimates.ANN is an efficient and robust technique for the modelling of various qualitative and quantitative attributes commonly used in forest mensuration.The effective use of ANN to estimate araucaria bark in natural forests reinforces its potential,besides the possibility of application for other forest species.

Crown and leaf traits as predictors of subtropical tree sapling growth rates

Aims Growth rates of plants are driven by factors that influence the amount of resources captured and the efficiency of resource use.In trees,the amount of light captured and the efficiency of light use strongly depends on crown characteristics and leaf traits.Although theory predicts that both crown and leaf traits affect tree growth,few studies have yet to integrate these two types of traits to explain species-specific growth rates.Using 37 broad-leaved tree species of subtropical forests in SE China,we investigated how interspecific differences in wood volume growth rates were affected by crown and leaf traits.We tested the hypotheses that(i)larger crown dimensions promote growth rates,(ii)species-specific growth rates are positively related to leaf stomatal conductance,leaf water potential and leaf chemical components,and negatively related to leaf C/N and leaf toughness and(iii)the two sets of traits better explain growth rates in combination than either alone.Methods Our study was conducted in a large-scale forest Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning experiment in China(BEF-China),located in a mountainous region in Jiangxi Province.We related 17 functional traits(two crown dimension and three crown structure traits;six physiological and six morphological leaf traits)to the mean annual growth rate of wood volume of young trees of the studied species.Interrelationships between crown and leaf traits were analyzed using principal component analysis.Simple linear regression analysis was used to test the effect of each trait separately.We used multiple regression analysis to establish the relationship of growth rate to each set of traits(crown traits,physiological and morphological leaf traits)and to the combination of all types of traits.The coefficients of determination(R^(2)_(adj))of the best multiple regression models were compared to determine the relative explanatory power of crown and leaf traits and a combination of both.Important Findings The species-specific growth rates were not related to any of the single crown traits,but were related positively to leaf stomatal conductance and leaf water potential individually,and negatively to leaf toughness,with approximately 13%variance explained by each of the traits.Combinations of different crown traits did not significantly explain the species-specific growth rates,whereas combinations of either physiological or morphological leaf traits explained 24%and 31%,respectively.A combination of both crown and leaf traits explained 42%of variance in species-specific growth rates.We concluded that sets of traits related to carbon assimilation at the leaf-level and to overall amount of leaves exposed at the crown-level jointly explained species-specific growth rates better than either set of traits alone.