BACKGROUND AND AIMS Extreme water stress episodes induce tree mortality, but the physiological mechanisms causing tree death are still poorly understood. This study tests the hypothesis that a potted tree's ability to survive extreme monotonic water stress is determined by the cavitation resistance of its xylem tissue. METHODS Two species were selected with contrasting cavitation resistance (...

Resistance to cavitation is a major determinant of plant survival under severe drought and can be used to quantify species adaptive potential. Interspecific variation in this key trait is well defined in woody species, but intraspecific variation (level and structure) resulting from standing genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity has never been determined. Combining for the first time in s...

Vulnerability to water stress-induced cavitation was measured on 27 woody shrub species from three arid plant communities including chaparral, coastal sage and Mojave Desert scrub. Dry season native embolism and pre-dawn water potential, and both wet and dry season xylem specific hydraulic conductivity (Ks) were measured. Cavitation resistance, estimated as water potential at 50% loss in conduc...

Magnesium based metal matrix composites (MMCs) have been extensively studied as an attractive choice for automotive and aerospace applications due to their low density and superior specific properties including strength, stiffness and creep resistance. Xi et al [1] studied the Ti6Al-4V particulate (TAp) reinforced magnesium matrix composite which is fabricated by powder metallurgy route. The te...

Xylem resistance to drought-induced cavitation is a key trait of plant water relations. This study assesses the genetic variation expressed for stem cavitation resistance within a population of a riparian species, the European black poplar (Populus nigra L.), and explores its relationships with xylem anatomy, water-use efficiency (WUE), and growth. Sixteen structural and physiological traits re...

Plants transport water under negative pressure and this makes their xylem vulnerable to cavitation. Among plant organs, root xylem is often highly vulnerable to cavitation due to water stress. The use of centrifuge methods to study organs, such as roots, that have long vessels are hypothesized to produce erroneous estimates of cavitation resistance due to the presence of open vessels through me...

The production of Al based monotectic alloys with uniform microstructure is usually difficult due to the large density difference between the two immiscible liquid phases, which limits the application of such alloys. Here, we apply three orthogonal ultrasounds during the liquid phase separation process of ternary Al71.9Sn20.4Cu7.7 immiscible alloy. A uniform microstructure consisting of fine se...

In order to avoid or predict cavitation erosion, it is necessary to know resistance of materials against to cavitation impacts. The cavitation impacts, which are larger than certain threshold level, only affect cavitation erosion of materials. In the present paper, existence of the threshold level was revealed experimentally. The threshold level of material is a new parameter to predict the cav...

surface-piercing propellers (spps) have been widely used in high speed craft due to some desirable features such as high efficiency, omission of resistance of equipment attached to the propeller and proper functioning of cavitation. unlike the submerged propellers, theoretical methods have no significant application on simulation of sppsbecause of problems related to modeling of these propeller...