Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The following corrections may be incorporated by the authors to improve the quality of the paper.

 

Two notations (V1 and V2) are given for forward speed in abstract.

Line No. 114 and 116, the number 6 should be removed.

In Figure 2, the output

Same caption is given for Figure 4 and 5.

In Figure 5, 10 points are plotted. How did you get those points?

Some more clarification is required for Figure 5.

Section title 2.2 is missing.

Grammatical error in Line No.246. “Table 2 showed shows…”

What is Block degree? (mentioned in Table 6.

How the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble was selected?

What is x and y mentioned in equation (7)?

The scientific reason behind the Figures 10 and 11 should be explained.

Equation numbers should be mentioned in the manuscript.

How the relative error is calculated? It is not matched with the values mentioned in Table 10. Kindly check.

Work performance with optimal parameter is not clear in Figure 12.

What is the need of the study of data obtained during 2020in the current context?

Future scope should be included in the conclusion section.

Is there any change in R2 value before and after eliminating the insignificant terms in the regression equation?

In equation 7, why two parameters are considered?

What is Adeq Precision? What may be the accepted value?

 

It is already mentioned in the comments.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to improve our manuscript, and these comments are really helpful to us. The one-to-one responses to the Reviewer 1 comments are as follows:

 

Point 1: Two notations (V1 and V2) are given for forward speed in abstract.

 

Response 1: In our original manuscript, the machine forward speed was a necessary experimental factor in both section 2.4.2, 2.4.3 and following text. Therefore, in order to avoid misunderstanding when expressing machine forward speed, V1 and V2 were applied to distinguish them from each other. Based on this comment, we had made revisions by means of using V to represent the machine forward speed throughout the revised manuscript.

 

Point 2: Line No. 114 and 116, the number 6 should be removed.

 

Response 2: In Figure 1, No. 6 part was six-wire signal slip ring. We apologize for the misunderstanding caused by the captions of Figure 1 and the omission of words in line 114 and 116 to the reviewer. We had revised them in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 3: In Figure 2, the output

 

Response 3: We are very sorry for the inaccurate annotations on Figure 2. We had revised it in the revised manuscript. In fact, our system workflow could be summarized as two parts. One was to obtain the thickness of the stubble, and the other was to adjust the pressure in two-level regulation based on the thickness, so the output was high level or low level of pressure.

 

Point 4: Same caption is given for Figure 4 and 5.

 

Response 4: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. In the revised manuscript, the right caption of Figure 5, ’The relationship between the actual stubble thickness and the device detected and converted stubble thicknes’, had been supplemented.

 

Point 5: In Figure 5, 10 points are plotted. How did you get those points?

 

Response 5: The stubble thickness was 0-10cm manually laid, with an increase of 1cm each time. The EC detection probe was smeared with colored dye to mark the original position of measurement in the soil bin. The measurement of actual stubble thickness was manually measured using a ruler to measure the distance from the soil surface to the outer surface of the wheel, which was applied to press on the original position marked by the colored dye, shown in Figure 1a. The 10 points were calculated with three replications, shown as Figure 5. The horizontal axis represented the value of device detected and converted stubble thickness, while the vertical axis represented the value of actual stubble thickness.

The slope of the linear fitting line represented the correlation between two types of data. The closer R² was to 1, the higher the correlation between the two types of data was, which meant that the value of device detected and converted stubble thickness represented the value of actual stubble thickness more accurately.

 

Point 6: Some more clarification is required for Figure 5.

 

Response 6: We had supplemented more clarification mainly included the acquisition method of horizontal and vertical coordinate data, and the significance, which can also refer to the reply to Point 5.

 

Point 7: Section title 2.2 is missing.

 

Response 7: We had supplemented section title 2.2 and set the format to be the same as other same type titles.

 

Point 8: Grammatical error in Line No.246. “Table 2 showed shows…”

 

Response 8: We are very sorry for this grammatical error.We had revised it in the revised manuscript by removing ‘shows’.

 

Point 9: What is Block degree? (mentioned in Table 6.

 

Response 9: According to GB/T 20865-2017 ‘no or little-tillage fertilizes-seeder in China’, Block degree is one of the evaluation index to evaluate no or little-tillage fertilizes-seeders’ performance. The meaning of Block degree is the degree to which stubbles cause obstruction to no or little-tillage fertilizes-seeders. It is classified into light block and heavy block. During no-till seeding, when light block happens, the stalks and stubble can flow away smoothly between the rows and seeder works steadily; when heavy block happens, stalks and stubble wind around the furrow openers or row cleaners tightly, the stalks dragging on the ground might lead to the seeders’ abnormal work. The same phrase usage of Block degree had already been used in Reference 3, which we referred to.

 

Point 10: How the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble was selected?

 

Response 10: During the experiment, the degree of cutting could be divided into three categories. The first was that stubble could be completely cut off; the second was that most of the stubble was cut off, but there was still a small amount of inner and stubble epidermis that was not completely cut off; the third was that the stubble epidermis was not cut off or only damaged. Considering that most of the incompletely cut stubble were indeed cut and damaged and only a portion was connected left, therefore, we chose 50% as the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble.

 

Point 11: What is x and y mentioned in equation (7)?

 

Response 11: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. The regression models of CR and WC were calculated from the same experiment, so the character variables should be uniform. ‘x’ should be ‘P’, which represent the pressure factor. ‘y’ should be ‘V₂’, which represent the speed factor. We had revised it in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 12: The scientific reason behind the Figures 10 and 11 should be explained.

 

Response 12: Thanks for your suggestion. We had supplemented several scientific reasons accoding to your suggestion,. As for Figure 10, we had stated the reasons for the impact of SMC, SC, and V on STDE, and pointed out a range of conditions under which the device could work efficiently in the upper paragraph of Figure 10. As for Figure 11, we had stated the reasons for the impact of P, α, and V on SCR and the impact of P and V on WC, and then pointed out a range of conditions under which the device could work more efficiently in the following paragraph of Figure 11.

 

Point 13: Equation numbers should be mentioned in the manuscript.

 

Response 13: The equation numbers had all been supplemented according to the comment. All the revision details about equation numbers could be found in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 14: How the relative error is calculated? It is not matched with the values mentioned in Table 10. Kindly check.

 

Response 14: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. the relative error should be calculated from the following equation:

 

All the revisions about relative error could be found in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 15: Work performance with optimal parameter is not clear in Figure 12.

 

Response 15: We had submitted a more clear image in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 16: What is the need of the study of data obtained during 2020in the current context?

 

Response 16: The description of 2020 in the article appears on line 225, and we apologize for the confusion and misunderstanding, which is the study of data obtained during 2020, caused by our unclear description. In fact, what we want to state is the time when our experiment was conducted and the data was obtained was 2021, and what we emphasized is that the planting and harvesting methods of crops was from the previous year 2020. Based on this, we have supplemented a description of the experimental time ’2021’ on line 223.

 

Point 17: Future scope should be included in the conclusion section.

 

Response 17: We had supplemented a future scope in the conclusion section. Future scope could focus on two aspects: improving the cutting efficiency and analyzing the disturbance of soil caused by waterjet after cutting stubble, which could be achieved through virtual simulation technology to simulate the impact of more factors on cutting efficiency, and to more intuitively observe the disturbance of waterjet on soil after cutting stubble.

 

Point 18: Is there any change in R2 value before and after eliminating the insignificant terms in the regression equation?

 

Response 18: There must be a difference in R2 before and after eliminating the insignificant terms in the regression equation.As for the regression equations in the original manuscript, we only presented the regression equations after eliminating the insignificant terms. Therefore, we had supplemented value of ANOVA before and after eliminating the insignificant terms and value of R-Squared values of statistics analysis before and after eliminating the insignificant terms in the Table5, 6, 9 and 10.

 

Point 19: In equation 7, why two parameters are considered?

 

Response 19: We are very sorry for this careless mistake.The regression models of SCR and WC were calculated from the same experiment, so the character variables should be uniform. ‘x’ should be ‘P’, which represent the pressure factor. ‘y’ should be ‘V₂’, which represent the speed factor. We had revised them in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 20: What is Adeq Precision? What may be the accepted value?

 

Response 20: According to the official manual of the software ‘Design Expert’, ‘Adeq Precision’ measures the signal to noise ratio. A ratio greater than 4 is the accepted value. The models in this manuscript all had a ratio greater than 4, which meant they all had practical significance.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript designs a waterjet cutting device for no-till sowing, which can adjust water pressure according to the stubble thickness, and conducted a performance experiment to evaluate the optimal parameters. There is no doubt that waterjet cutting technology, as an environmental-friendly cutting method, is suitable for cutting agricultural materials because of its no-heat and spark-free process and non-contact cutting way. As far as I know, waterjet cutting technology has been widely used in industry. The author noticed its new application in agricultural material cutting and took it into consideration that maize stubble hinder no-till sowing. Compared with the published studies, this paper aims to the accurate application of waterjet cutting, based on constant rate application of waterjet couldn’t match the complex field environment and stubble thickness. This is a logically structure manuscript that makes a relevant contribution to the literature. My opinion is that the work is suited to be published on this journal, nevertheless, authors should make further efforts to improve the manuscript, working in the following directions:

Language

1. Issues related to abbreviations. Some word collocations that occur repeatedly can appear in a form of abbreviations. For avoiding redundancy when repeating multiple times. For example, stubble thickness detection error(DE) in the paper may change into STDE, stubble cutting rate(CR) in the paper may change into(SCR), and so on. Similar abbreviation problems hope the authors will check and correct seriously for a good experience to readers.

2. In both the abstract and the following main text, the author has used the expression of ‘stubble’ and ‘straw’. To the best of my knowledge, ‘stubble’ emphasizes more likely ‘the part of crops that are left in the ground after harvest’. And according to the authors self-selected key words, ‘maize stubble’, we infer that ‘stubble’ may be more appropriate for the paper.

3. When ‘maize’ first appears in the abstract and main text, a Latin name needs to be added, ‘maize (Zea mays L.)’.

Table and Figure

4. The number of digits after the decimal point of figures and tables in the whole paper should be unified.

5. The subscript and superscript forms of letter and number in the whole paper need to be carefully revised, for example, V1 in Line 300, V1 in the Table 4, R2, Adj R2 and Pre R2 in the Table 5 and so on.

Introduction

6. According to the studies mentioned in the Introduction, some researchers adopted a high pressure(100-300Mpa) with large-scale specialized equipment to conducted experiments. I suggest providing more references to offer more proof for the factor of pressure in your device.

Method and Material

7. Figure 1 shows the structure of the connection between their components well. But in Figure 1c, is it necessary to add the power supply of the proportional solenoid valve? From the perspective of its power consumption and usage scenario, the 12V power supply can be used in Figure 1b. I would suggest providing necessary information and supplement after consulting to improve it.

8. Is the testing method in Figure 6 a standard testing method? Any references available? I would suggest providing supplementary explanations.

Result and Discussion

9. Line 276-282: I would suggest narrative data detail for moisture content, like EC.

10.In the section 3.1 and 3.2, three regression models are given after removing insignificant terms. But in the tables of ANOVA for response surface reduced quadratic model for DE, CR and WC, all the source are listed. I suggest removing insignificant terms in the tables, as well.

Reference

11. The reference 21 should be corrected. Only the major words in periodical titles should be capitalized.

12. The reference 27 should be corrected. The abbreviation of the author's Chinese first name needs to be corrected.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to improve our manuscript, and these comments are really helpful to us. The one-to-one responses to the Reviewer 2 comments are as follows:

 

Point 1: Issues related to abbreviations. Some word collocations that occur repeatedly can appear in a form of abbreviations. For avoiding redundancy when repeating multiple times. For example, stubble thickness detection error(DE) in the paper may change into STDE, stubble cutting rate(CR) in the paper may change into(SCR), and so on. Similar abbreviation problems hope the authors will check and correct seriously for a good experience to readers.

 

Response 1: We had revised such issues related to abbreviations in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 2: In both the abstract and the following main text, the author has used the expression of ‘stubble’ and ‘straw’. To the best of my knowledge, ‘stubble’ emphasizes more likely ‘the part of crops that are left in the ground after harvest’. And according to the authors self-selected key words, ‘maize stubble’, we infer that ‘stubble’ may be more appropriate for the paper.

 

Response 2: We had revised it.

 

Point 3: When ‘maize’ first appears in the abstract and main text, a Latin name needs to be added, ‘maize (Zea mays L.)’.

 

Response 3: We had revised it.

 

Point 4: The number of digits after the decimal point of figures and tables in the whole paper should be unified.

 

Response 4: We had revised them in the revised manuscript.We used the counting method that retains two decimal places throughout the article. But in the special parts,such as ANOVA for response surface reduced quadratic model, R-Squared values of statistics analysis and regression model, we used the counting method that retains four decimal places.

 

Point 5: The subscript and superscript forms of letter and number in the whole paper need to be carefully revised, for example, V1 in Line 300, V1 in the Table 4, R2, Adj R2 and Pre R2 in the Table 5 and so on.

 

Response 5: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. We had revised them.

 

Point 6: According to the studies mentioned in the Introduction, some researchers adopted a high pressure(100-300Mpa) with large-scale specialized equipment to conducted experiments. I suggest providing more references to offer more proof for the factor of pressure in your device.

 

Response 6: Thanks for your suggestion. In our original manuscript, Reference 26 was an appropriate example compared with ultra-high pressure, which studied the interaction and erosion mechanism of waterjet on the surface of A grade marine steel under 20 MPa water pressure.

 

Point 7: Figure 1 shows the structure of the connection between their components well. But in Figure 1c, is it necessary to add the power supply of the proportional solenoid valve? From the perspective of its power consumption and usage scenario, the 12V power supply can be used in Figure 1b. I would suggest providing necessary information and supplement after consulting to improve it.

 

Response 7: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. The power supply of the proportional solenoid valve did use a DC 24V power supply. We had supplemented a schematic diagram of a DC 24V power supply in Figure 1 in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 8: Is the testing method in Figure 6 a standard testing method? Any references available? I would suggest providing supplementary explanations.41-43

 

Response 8: The testing method in Figure 6 was referred to published articles, which had been added in the Reference List of Reference 41-43.

 

Point 9: Line 276-282: I would suggest narrative data detail for moisture content, like EC.

 

Response 9: Thanks for you suggestion.We had supplemented narrative data details for moisture content in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 10: In the section 3.1 and 3.2, three regression models are given after removing insignificant terms. But in the tables of ANOVA for response surface reduced quadratic model for DE, CR and WC, all the source are listed. I suggest removing insignificant terms in the tables, as well.

 

Response 10: We had supplemented the both value of ANOVA before and after eliminating the insignificant terms and value of R-Squared values of statistics analysis before and after eliminating the insignificant terms in the section 3.1 and 3.2.

 

Point 11: The reference 21 should be corrected. Only the major words in periodical titles should be capitalized.

 

Response 11: We had revised it.

 

Point 12: The reference 27 should be corrected. The abbreviation of the author's Chinese first name needs to be corrected.

 

Response 12: We had revised it.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have developed and performed evaluation of a pressure adjustable waterjet stubble cutting device with thickness detection for no-till sowing. This is beneficial for farming. Some discussions are suggested to further improve are required.

- Introduction: the highlighting areas of improvement to the main contributions of the research.

- Materials and Methods: the initial explanation for whole research methods according to the research aims should be discussed before starting the subtopics for more understanding.  

- According to many components in Figure 1. Theses should be grouped according to their purpose of using. Some specific instrument such as sensors, a jet cutting head and gauges  should provide larger image and more technical details.

- From the system workflow in Figure 2, why do not record the thickness data if case of  No  EC_Ti+1 -EC_Ti ˃ EC_Tx as the system still working with low pressure set.

- More discussion Figure. 4, how to calibrate the stubble thickness. And what the result show in Figure 5. How accurate of the detected device comparing to the actual thickness.

- For Equation (4), why 50% was defined for the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble. Are some rows cannot be completed for the cutting? Why is that?

- For ANOVA analysis, the p-value should consider at only one criterial in order to create regression models. This effect to the accuracy of the regression models.

- For equation (7), what are the variables x and y stand for?

- For the decease of water consumption by 13.22% as shown in Abstract and Conclusion, where this value be calculated from?

- The benefits of adjustable waterjet stubble cutting in the term of productivity and economic should be discussed in the conclusion.

-

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to improve our manuscript, and these comments are really helpful to us. The one-to-one responses to the Reviewer 3 comments are as follows:

 

Point 1: Introduction: the highlighting areas of improvement to the main contributions of the research.

 

Response 1: This article mainly focuses on two areas: 1) Design a device that can adjust the waterjet pressure based on stubble thickness for stubble management; 2) Study physical properties and detection device of soil and stubble in Northeast China during sowing.

 

Point 2: Materials and Methods: the initial explanation for whole research methods according to the research aims should be discussed before starting the subtopics for more understanding.

 

Response 2: We are really sorry for our unclear layout resulting in your misunderstanding and a bad reading experience. Actually, the statement betweent Tittle 2.4 and Tittle 2.4.1 is the explanation for the experiment methods and their aims. They mainly included: 1) the condition of EC measurement experiment of soil and stubble and its aim was to establish a basis for determining the EC and SMC gap between stubble and soil; 2) SMC, SC and V were selected as the experimental factor for stubble thickness detection performance experiment, with the aim to evaluate the performance of the stubble thickness detection device; 3) a compared experiment with and without stubble thickness detection device to adjust the pressure was conducted to evaluate WC. And a field experiment was carried out with the P, α and V as experiment factors and SCR and WC as evaluation indicators to verify the effectiveness of the device.

 

Point 3: According to many components in Figure 1. Theses should be grouped according to their purpose of using. Some specific instrument such as sensors, a jet cutting head and gauges  should provide larger image and more technical details.

 

Response 3: As mentioned in the comment, we also considered that there are too many components that make people confused. Therefore, in Figure 1, Figure 1b the system circuit (Component 1-7), was marked with dashed boxes and Figure 1c, waterjet stubble cutting device (Component 8-17), was also marked with dashed boxes. And the names of Component 1-17 were labeled in the figure caption. A table of instrument technical details was added in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 4: From the system workflow in Figure 2, why do not record the thickness data if case of  No  ECTi+1 -ECTi ˃ ECTx as the system still working with low pressure set.

 

Response 4: We used ‘ECTi+1 -ECTi ˃ ECTx’ as a criterion to tell whether the EC sensor was located at the boundary between stubble and soil. Because according to Section 2.4.1. ‘EC measurement experiment of soil and stubble in the field’, there was a significant difference in EC between stubble and soil. If ‘ECTi+1 -ECTi ˃ ECTx’, it indicated that the EC sensor was located at the boundary of stubble and soil, then we need to record the angle at this time and convert it according to the pre-program to obtain the stubble thickness. If ‘ECTi+1 -ECTi < ECTx’s, it indicated that the EC sensor was not located at the boundary of stubble and soil at this time, so there is no need to record the stubble thickness converted by the angle.

 

Point 5: More discussion Figure. 4, how to calibrate the stubble thickness. And what the result show in Figure 5. How accurate of the detected device comparing to the actual thickness.

 

Response 5: We had supplemented more discussion of Figure 4 by moving the description from 2.4.2 to 2.2. And how to calibrate the stubble thickness was also added in the revised manuscript. The 10 points were calculated with three replications, shown as Figure 5. The horizontal axis represented the value of device detected and converted stubble thickness, while the vertical axis represented the value of actual stubble thickness.

The slope of the linear fitting line represented the correlation between two types of data. The closer R2 was to 1, the higher the correlation between the two types of data was, which meant that the value of device detected and converted stubble thickness represented the value of actual stubble thickness more accurately.

 

Point 6: For Equation (4), why 50% was defined for the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble. Are some rows cannot be completed for the cutting? Why is that?

 

Response 6: During the experiment, the degree of cutting could be divided into three categories. The first was that stubble could be completely cut off; the second was that most of the stubble was cut off, but there was still a small amount of inner and stubble epidermis that was not completely cut off; the third was that the stubble epidermis was not cut off or only damaged. Considering that most of the incompletely cut stubble were indeed cut and damaged and only a portion was connected left, therefore, we chose 50% as the coefficient of incompletely cut stubble.

 

Point 7: For ANOVA analysis, the p-value should consider at only one criterial in order to create regression models. This effect to the accuracy of the regression models.

 

Response 7: We strongly agree with your comment. The p-value that corresponds to the F-statistic could determine if the difference between group means is statistically significant. As we established the regression equation in this article, we used p<0.05 as the threshold for variable significance. The insignificant items (p>0.05) had been all eliminated when establishing the regression equation. The labels of p<0.01 and p<0.001 in the ANOVA analysis table is intended to be visually readable.

 

 

Point 8: For equation (7), what are the variables x and y stand for?

 

Response 8: We are very sorry for this careless mistake. The regression models of SCR and WC were calculated from the same experiment, so the character variables should be uniform. ‘x’ should be ‘P’, which represent the pressure factor. ‘y’ should be ‘V’, which represent the speed factor. We had revised it in the revised manuscript.

 

Point 9: For the decease of water consumption by 13.22% as shown in Abstract and Conclusion, where this value be calculated from?

 

Response 9: According to Table 6, water consumption by 13.22% was calculated from:

 

 

Point 10: The benefits of adjustable waterjet stubble cutting in the term of productivity and economic should be discussed in the conclusion.

 

Response 10: We had supplemented the benefits of adjustable waterjet stubble cutting in the conclusion section mainly based on the following aspects: production efficiency, economy and environmental impact.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

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