No abstract

Although numerous studies have investigated the individual effects of salinity, irrigation and fertilization on soil microbial communities, relatively less attention has been paid to their combined influences, especially using molecular techniques. Based on the field of orthogonal designed test and deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing technology, the effects of saline water irrigation amount, salinity level of irrigation water and nitrogen (N) fertilizer rate on soil bacterial community structure were investigated. The results showed that the irrigation amount was the most dominant factor in determining the bacterial richness and diversity, followed by the irrigation water salinity and N fertilizer rate. The values of Chao1 estimator, abundance-based coverage estimator and Shannon indices decreased with an increase in irrigation amount while increased and then decreased with an increase in irrigation water salinity and N fertilizer rate. The highest soil bacterial richness and diversity were obtained under the least irrigation amount (25 mm), medium irrigation water salinity (4.75 dS/m) and medium N fertilizer rate (350 kg/ha). However, different bacterial phyla were found to respond distinctively to these three factors: irrigation amount significantly affected the relative abundances of Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi; irrigation water salinity mostly affected the members of Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes and Acidobacteria; and N fertilizer rate mainly influenced the Bacteroidetes' abundance. The results presented here revealed that the assessment of soil microbial processes under combined irrigation and fertilization treatments needed to be more careful as more variable consequences would be established by comparing with the influences based on an individual factor, such as irrigation amount or N fertilizer rate.

High‐temperature low‐cycle fatigue tests with and without a 10‐s strain hold period in a cycle were performed on a nickel base superalloy GH4049 under a fully reversed axial total strain control mode. Three creep–fatigue life prediction methods are chosen to analyse the experimental data. These methods are the linear damage summation method (LDS), the strain range partitioning method (SRP) and the strain energy partitioning method (SEP). Their ability to predict creep‐fatigue lives of GH4049 at 700, 800 and 850 °C has been evaluated. It is found that the SEP method shows an advantage over the SRP method for all the tests under consideration. At 850 °C, the LDS and SEP methods give a more satisfactory prediction for creep–fatigue lives. At the temperatures of 700 and 800 °C, the SRP and SEP methods can correlate the life data better than the LDS method. In addition, the differences in predictive ability of these methods have also been analysed. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) examination of fracture surfaces reveals that under creep–fatigue test conditions crack initiation mode is transgranular, while crack propagation mode is either intergranular plus transgranular or entirely intergranular, dependent on test temperature.