Stand problems consistently cause significant production losses and management problems in Arkansas rice fields. Previous research, funded by the Rice Research and Promotion Board, identified the role of environmental factors and soilborne plant pathogens in limiting rice stand establishment, and had the goal of determining the conditions where soilborne pathogens, especially Pythium species, p...

This paper presents an optimization approach to deal with the problem of minimizing the hot rolling time of a steel slab. Unlike traditional approaches, this work also considers the chemical composition of the steel slab as a parameter, allowing the automatic setup for different steels of the hot rolling mill. To validate the approach discussed here, a six-stand rolling mill is modeled as an op...

This paper presents a method to recognize the various defect patterns of a cold mill strip using a binary decision tree constructed by genetic algorithm(GA). In this paper, GA was used to select a subset of the suitable features at each node in the binary decision tree. The feature subset with maximum fitness is chosen and the patterns are divided into two classes using a linear decision functi...

Strip profile control in cold rolling of thin strip is a difficult and challenge problem found in industry. Currently using the novel type of strip rolling mill, such as the work roll crossing and shifting is the one of the main methods to control the strip profile quality in cold rolling. In this paper, 3-D finite element simulation models of the thin strip profile in cold rolling for the work...

Knowledge of the position and the material conditions, e.g. the temperature, of the plates during hot rolling is important for process control. In fact, a precise material tracking system may help to prevent problems during the production process. This paper deals with the tracking of the rotation of heavy plates before and after the lateral expansion phase. The presented approach estimates the...

Size, age, and spatial structures were studied in a mixed, multilayered forest located in the Upper Susa Valley in Piedmont, Italy, using complete stem mapping, dendrochronology, and spatial analysis on a 1-ha permanent plot. All trees with a diameter >4 cm at 50 cm height (991) and stumps (322) were mapped, measured, and cored. The 639 cross-dated samples were used to reconstruct the disturban...