Characteristics of Acoustic Emission Response during Granite Splitting after High Temperature-Water Cooling Cycles

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor:

The manuscript with ID: sustainability-1979730 is written in good language and is useful for readers. However, the authors should address minor revisions before making a final decision. The minor revisions required are listed in the following points:

Comment 1:

The introduction is written in the form of a literary essay. The introduction should be reconsidered, taking into account its division into paragraphs.

Comment 2:

Authors should do the following:

·         Highlighting the novelty of the work clearly in the last paragraph of the introduction.

·         Figures and font colors should be improved.

·         Figure 9 (a-e) needs to be enlarged so readers can clearly see the scale.

·         Please, include only the main results in the final conclusion. Please shorten it as possible.

 

·         Please update old references with relevant recent references. Authors should cite references published from 2020 to 2022.

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers:

Thanks for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Characteristics of Acoustic Emission Response During Granite Splitting After High Temperature-Water Cooling Cycles”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We try our best to improve the manuscript and make appropriate changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. We appreciate the editors and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with your approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are listed below.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Kind regards,

Dong Zhu, Yuqing Fan, Xiaofei Liu, Xiangling Tao,Liegang Miao, Huiwu Jin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of “Characteristics of acoustic emission response during granite splitting after high temperature-water cooling cycle” by Zhu et al.

 

 

This paper presents the experimental evidence how the characteristics of Acoustic Emission from the granite samples are changed focusing on the heating-to-cooling cycles. As a result, AE is dependent on the number of heating-to-cooling cycles, the maximum temperatures, and so on. I think that the experiment was well organized, summarized and discussed. It is shown that some of the authors’ experimental results did support the previous studies. Overall I would recommend to publish this paper in the journal of Sustainability once the following concerns and questions are addressed.

 

 

General comments:

 

The authors performed the laboratory test with applying “tensile” force to the granite samples as far as I read the introduction section. I wonder why the authors did not discuss the effect of “compression” force on AE characteristics. Is this constrain relevant to the Brazilian splitting test device? On the other hand, the compression force seemed to be applied to the granite samples when I read the second half of the 2nd section. Could you clarify the experimental condition more? I would suggest that the authors should add arrows meaning the direction of force in Figure 2 if possible.

 

Probably, the authors tested only one granite sample for each case, except for the reference samples tested at 20 degreeC, which consisted of two samples. Is the repeatability guaranteed? In other words, can the author generalize their experimental results sufficiently?

 

 

Line comments:

Line 72: More explanation or an appropriate reference regarding “the Brazilian splitting test” may be helpful for wide readers.

 

Lines 72 – 73: The authors examined granite samples applied not only 20 thermally cycles but also smaller number of cycles, i.e., 1, 5, 10 and 15 times. So the present phrase may somewhat confuse readers.

 

Lines 134 – 143: Are the authors’ interpretation really correct? According to the yield force between specimens at 20 degreeC and 350 degreeC with respect to (a) and (b) of Figure4, the latter one is much smaller than the former one. Additionally, compared with (b) and (d) of Figure 4, the more cycles are provided, the weaker the granite disc becomes. The terminology of “a stable state” may bring the confusion.

 

Lines 144 – 158: Following the authors’ interpretations, the number of AE should be reduced with the number of thermal cycles at the initial stage. However, it seems opposite between the number of 5 and 10.

 

Line 196 and others:  Regarding the magnitude, “dB” should be inserted after numbers accordingly.

 

Line 229: Looking at Figure 6 (e) and (f), it is difficult to understand the phrase “the number of Acoustic Emission of the specimen is only collected to 2”.

 

Figure 2: If the authors intend “2R” is a diameter as described at Line 90, should revise the length of the arrow. Additionally, could you add a meaning about the vertical arrows?

 

Figure 4: Are the subtitles from (b) through (f) correct? I understand that they are the results in the case of 350 degreeC, and therefore they are not the sort of temperature but the number of cycle.

 

Figure 8: It does not seem that the maximum energy does not appear to be related to the heating-to-cooling history. And could the authors show the same plots for 650 degreeC?

 

Figure 9: Although the scale may be shown in each panel, it is too small to identify. Could you please add scale independently? How about 650 degreeC?

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers:

Thanks for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Characteristics of Acoustic Emission Response During Granite Splitting After High Temperature-Water Cooling Cycles”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We try our best to improve the manuscript and make appropriate changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. We appreciate the editors and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with your approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are listed below.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Kind regards,

Dong Zhu, Yuqing Fan, Xiaofei Liu, Xiangling Tao,Liegang Miao, Huiwu Jin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In granite splitting process, the acoustic emission attributes are central to determining the effect of water cooling cycle on the system. This application is in geothermal resource analysis and promotes sustainability in the mining plan. The article being reviewed experimented in this direction using the Brazilian splitting test. The article collected granite specimens. XRD diffraction analysis, among other tests was conducted on the samples. The experiment was conducted with care and followed scientific rules. The results are interesting and potentially of scientific value. However, several important issues need to be addressed to bring it up to publication level. They are as follows:

1. In the concluding part of the work there is need for one or two additional introductory sentences to summarize the broad objectives accomplished. Then the conclusion should be made as presented.

2. The work is certainly novel, of practical importance and of scientific value. Unfortunately, I could not see discussion on the novelty of the article. Please state it clearly.

3. Please also highlight the contributions of the article to the literature.

4. Why did the authors use this method and not other. Justify in the work.

5. Kindly include the future research aspect as the last part of the conclusion.

 

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers:

Thanks for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Characteristics of Acoustic Emission Response During Granite Splitting After High Temperature-Water Cooling Cycles”. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We try our best to improve the manuscript and make appropriate changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. We appreciate the editors and reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with your approval. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are listed below.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Kind regards,

Dong Zhu, Yuqing Fan, Xiaofei Liu, Xiangling Tao,Liegang Miao, Huiwu Jin

Author Response File: Author Response.docx