Breakwaters are the important and the costly ones of the marine structures. Composite breakwater is one of the common types in the world. Because of the sensitivity of composite breakwaters to environmental conditions, also construction costs, difficulty of repair and maintenance and importance of equipments on and behind the breakwater, design of composite breakwater must be very accurate. Goa...

Sap flux density in branches, leaf transpiration, stomatal conductance and leaf water potentials were measured in 16-year-old Quercus suber L. trees growing in a plantation in southern Portugal to understand how evergreen Mediterranean trees regulate water loss during summer drought. Leaf specific hydraulic conductance and leaf gas exchange were monitored during the progressive summer drought t...

Upscaled soil hydraulic properties are needed for many large-scale hydrologic applications such as regional and global climate studies and investigations of land–atmosphere interactions. Many larger scale subsurface flow and contaminant transport studies also require upscaled hydraulic property estimates. The objectives of this study were to develop a methodology for upscaling hydraulic propert...

Leakages and valve faults are among the most common faults in hydraulic systems. This paper studies the real-time detection and isolation of certain leakage and valve faults based on the results obtained in part one. In the first part, the mathematical model of a hydraulic test bed was analyzed with Global Sensitivity Analysis to facilitate a systematic and verified approach to model-based cond...

Ecosystem models have difficulty predicting plant drought responses, partially from uncertainty in the stomatal response to water deficits in soil and atmosphere. We evaluate a 'supply-demand' theory for water-limited stomatal behavior that avoids the typical scaffold of empirical response functions. The premise is that canopy water demand is regulated in proportion to threat to supply posed by...

Recent work suggests that hydraulic mechanisms, rather than cambium necrosis, may account for rapid post-fire tree mortality. We experimentally tested for xylem cavitation, as a result of exposure to high-vapour-deficit (D) heat plumes, and permanent xylem deformation, as a result of thermal softening of lignin, in two tree species differing in fire tolerance. We measured percentage loss of con...

Solid low-level radioactive wastes at the Savannah River Site (SRS) are disposed in trenches. In order to determine the permissible radioactive inventory limits for such disposal facilities, it is required to assess the behavior of radioactive waste material over long periods of time. The sensitivity of flow and I-129 (and similar radionuclides) transport in groundwater in the vadose zone to th...