The Application of Bamboo in the Railway Industry: A Sustainable Solution for Track Construction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents a review on the application of Bamboo in railway.

Comments to the authors:

1. In the introduction, expand on why Bamboo materials are important. Connect this more directly to your objective.

2. The abstract section should be rewrite to present the main findings of this study.

3. A section must discuss the life cycle assessment of the Bamboo material in railway engineering.

4. Figures 8 and 11 can be deleted.

5. To maximumzie the benefits from this study, the authors address all technical issues related to the application of Bamboo materials in railway engineering such as durability, types of layers that can be used in, size of Bamboo, location of Bamboo in railway section.

6. A section for future directions for research on this topic mustvbe added 

7. Recommend revising the abstract to better reflect major findings and conclusions.

8. Consider adding a limitations and recommendations for future work section.

Must be improved 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript ID: infrastructures-2701889 entitled "The Application of Bamboo in the Railway Industry: A Sustainable Solution for Track Construction" for Journal of “Infrastructures” has been reviewed.

-Abstract clearly presents objects methods and results.

Railway industry has shown that it has a high interest to employ sustainable materials in  construction such as recycled materials and composites. Bamboo as a high renewable natural source  has been suggested as a construction material in the railway industry. This material due to high  strength and durability, sustainability, low embodied energy, and easy to handle has been used in  different types of construction materials such as plywood, scrimber, laminates, and fibers. This pa  per aims to review the application of bamboo as a railway material and give more suggestions for   future employment as railway sleeper. Therefore, the mechanical properties and those features of  bamboo which may bring more attention to this material for sleeper construction are discussed.   Bamboo products such as plywood and scrimber can provide higher mechanical properties than  timber sleeper. Due to its rapid growth rate, it is considered an environmentally friendly material.   Several reasons reduce deployment of bamboo in railway industry such as proportionally light-19 weight which decrease lateral resistance of sleepers, long term performance study and their perfor-20 mance in some regions with variable weathering action. This review paper can result in a higher 21 employment of bamboo in the railway industry to make a sustainable railway track.

-Keywords are adequate.

-Scientific methods are adequately used.

-Terminology is adequate.

-Results are clearly presented.

-Conclusions are logically derived from the data presented.

This paper aims to study the potential and properties of bamboo products to manufacture a railway sleeper. Therefore, mechanical properties of bamboo products, and theirmanufacturing methods are discussed. The application of bamboo in railway industry has been reviewed and numerical modelling of bamboo is presented. A brief overview of authors in bamboo sleeper production is also shown in this review paper. Bamboo sleepers static behavior is compared with current railway sleepers. The key findings of this paper  are as follows: 1. Bamboo had been considered as a low-quality product for construction, byemerging new technologies to manufacture bamboo products such as plywood, bamboo scrimber, laminates, this material provides a better property than wood and composites 358 with high stiffness and strength/ mass per volume and low carbon emission features. 359 2. More than 104 countries have contributed to bamboo publications with around  4119 papers. These contributions have been increased in recent years which shows theattention between researchers even in those countries without bamboo as a local plant. 3. One of the main defects regarding the application of bamboo is the wide rangeof properties which can be found in the same bamboo products. However, the mechanical 364 properties of bamboo products highly increases but high difference between mechanicalproperties of structures’ elements may cause failure. 366 4. Bamboo plywood and scrimber are the main products that are suitable for rail-367 way sleeper production regarding their durability and mechanical performance. These 368 products can provide moisture-proofing, water resistance, corrosion resistance, and resistance to salt damage. 5. Application of bamboo in railway industry has not been well extended compared with other parts of structural science. This material has mostly been used as a soil improvement. However, considering its properties it has potential to be widely used in railway sleeper manufacturing as it has been studied so far. The shortcoming for more application of bamboo in railway industry is the concerns about its weathering and long 375 term performance as there are no such studies. 376 6. To model bamboo Bamboo, it is mostly characterized as an anisotropic mate-377 rial, with greater tensile and compressive strengths in the longitudinal direction com-378 pared to the transverse directions. The literature has been proved that most FEM models 379 can be validated with experimental results with low differences.

-----------------------------------------------

The authors have made significant improvements to the paper by addressing the feedback provided by the reviewers, resulting in a clearer presentation of results. Based on these revisions, the paper is now ready for acceptance.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I carefully examined the manuscript as well as previous comments of reviewers and respective revisions. I still have some suggestions / questions / required corrections.

Reviewer 4 suggested adding a flowchart to the study. Your reply "to avoid increasing the length of paper this flowchart is not added". I don't think it's appropriate reply. I also suggest adding a flowchart as this is common for review papers. 

A few questions regarding bibliometric analysis. Why do you emphasize namely researchers who work in the area? What about institutions? What about keywords occurrence? What about journals?

Title of Fig. 3 is incorrect (title of Fig. 2 is repeated twice). 

Section 1.5. is "Current number of research about bamboo". Then you write that "more than 1000 authors have written about bamboo applications in structures with more than 4119 papers (Figure 2)". But title of Fig. 2 is "Bibliometric analysis of 160 researchers worked on railway bridge transition zone". So what is presented in Fig. 2? 

As all conclusions should be directly related to your research, I suggest adding a chart "publication number - years". Because in conclusion No 2 you state that "these contributions have been increased in recent years", but we do not see this in the main text of the manuscript. 

It is hard to track the revisions as you neither present comprehensive replies, nor highlight all the revisions, e.g. (1) "Thank you for your suggestion discussion part has been improved". There is no section called "Discussion" in your paper. So where and what was improved? (2) "...more references are added" (in response to Reviewer 3). "More references from 2021 to 2023 are added" (in response to Reviewer 4). Which and where are newly added references? You highlighted only two references [10] and [11] in the text. 

Table 2 can be misunderstood as it is now presented. References should be not in the last column, as now there is an impression that prices are taken from these references.  

What was revised in Section 3.1 in response to Reviewer 4?

There are still a lot of misprintings in the text, e.g. "To model bamboo Bamboo" (Conclusion 6).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors addressed all the reviewers comments

should be improved

Reviewer 3 Report

My comments are considered, more clear replies are provided and the manuscript is improved. Now it is acceptable. 

Minor editing required.