Dy–Al–Si System: Experimental Study of the Liquid–Solid Phase Equilibria in the Al-Rich Corner
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper reports experimental data on liquid-solid phase equilibria in the Al-rich corner for Dy-Al-Si systems.
The scientific and engineering significance of this study is not that high, but the data seems to have been obtained in a sufficiently reliable manner and has a certain value to be reported.
The resolution of Figures 4 and 5 is quite low and the data is unreadable. Please modify them.
I have no other comments.
Author Response
I thank the Reviewer for the very helpful comments, Figures 4 and 5 have been replaced with clearer images.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
I went through your paper entitled:
Dy-Al-Si system: experimental study of the liquid-solid phase equilibria in the Al-rich corner, sutdies the effect of the dysprosium addition on the constitution and topology of the liquidus surface with the focus mainly on the Al rich part.
The study is valuable considering the potential of the appliccation fields and in the same time considering the sustainability aspect. However there are some major improvements that are required for a high quality research to be published in the Crystals journal.
My comments are as follows:
- The Introduction should not be finished with tables. Please improve this section and my suggestion is to provide the main objective of this study at the final of this section;
- Section 2. materials and methods
- Please be careful with the chemical language, the silicon is not a metal!! please reformulate
- Sample obtaining is too short presented, there are no information and technical details regarding the method used for the sample preparing; Please provide these details;
- Page 4, lines 114-115 you said .. the samples have been incorporated in conductiv resin blocks, What kind of resin, you should provide this information!
- Section 3 results and discussion should be greatly improved and reorganized;
- Please take each analysis results and discuss in turn, for example
- Microstruture and morphological analysis (SEM) as 3.1...presents the results andtry to presents the explanations for these, the same should be done for each characterization technique
- At the final of the section 3 you should write one or two paragraphs regarding the correlations of the caracterization results.
- All the DTA curves are unclear, please improve their image resolutions!!
- All that you have written in Conclusion Section should be moved in the Section 3 - Results and duscussions
- Please pay attention: The Conclusions of a study should briefly summarize the main results drawn from the research and maybe the future research directions to be approached!!
The Conclusions should not be numbered, it should stand alone independenly by the all the other sections of a study.
Author Response
I thank the Reviewer for the very helpful comments, in the following the answers and comments.
- The Introduction should not be finished with tables. Please improve this section and my suggestion is to provide the main objective of this study at the final of this section;
The introduction has been revised and implemented following the suggestion provided.
Section 2. materials and methods
- Please be careful with the chemical language, the silicon is not a metal!! please reformulate
The chemical language has been carefully checked.
- Sample obtaining is too short presented, there are no information and technical details regarding the method used for the sample preparing; Please provide these details;
The samples synthesis paragraph has been implemented.
- Page 4, lines 114-115 you said .. the samples have been incorporated in conductive resin blocks, What kind of resin, you should provide this information!
Missing information has been added.
- Section 3 results and discussion should be greatly improved and reorganized.
The results and the discussion have been rearranged and implemented.
Please take each analysis results and discuss in turn, for example:
- Microstruture and morphological analysis (SEM) as 3.1...presents the results and try to presents the explanations for these, the same should be done for each characterization technique
The explanation of the experimental results has been improved as suggested.
- At the final of the section 3 you should write one or two paragraphs regarding the correlations of the characterization results.
Section 3 has been revised and implemented following the suggestion provided.
- All the DTA curves are unclear, please improve their image resolutions!!
The figures have been changed and the resolution is that required by the journal
- All that you have written in Conclusion Section should be moved in the Section 3 - Results and discussions
Part of the text previously in the conclusions paragraph has been moved in the results and discussion
- Please pay attention: The Conclusions of a study should briefly summarize the main results drawn from the research and maybe the future research directions to be approached!!
The conclusions have been revised and implemented following the suggestion provided.
-The Conclusions should not be numbered, it should stand alone independently by the all the other sections of a study.
The number has been removed from the paragraph.
Reviewer 3 Report
It is a correct scientific work of the Al-rich region of the Dy-Al-Si ternary system.
DTA figures. It is not possible to see the information. The quality of these figures needs to be improved to check information in both axes and temperature ranges.
XRPD analysis: Why the authors use LATCON? There are softwares that calculate microstrain, crystallite size, ….
Phase percentage: There are some samples with several phases. It is possible to estimate the percentage of these phases in each specimen? The discussion should be improved.
I recommend English revision by a native English.
I recommend English revision by a native English.
Author Response
-DTA figures. It is not possible to see the information. The quality of these figures needs to be improved to check information in both axes and temperature ranges.
The figures have been changed and the resolution is that required by the journal.
-XRPD analysis: Why the authors use LATCON? There are softwares that calculate microstrain, crystallite size, ….
In this study we used RX diffraction to confirm the phases recognized by SEM, surely we could have used other software (eg Match), but at that time we used Latcon.
-Phase percentage: There are some samples with several phases. It is possible to estimate the percentage of these phases in each specimen? The discussion should be improved.
In this work we have not estimated the percentages of each phase in the samples. We limited ourselves to qualitatively observing its abundance. In studying the isothermal sections of these systems, where the samples underwent very long annealing followed by quenching, we have done so.
-I recommend English revision by a native English.
English has been revised
Reviewer 4 Report
The article presents numerous experimental results regarding the study of phase transformations in the ternary system Dy-Al-Si. Apparently, the authors tried to group the material as clearly as possible for the reader's perception. However, this does not always work out. At least, the paragraphs in the Introduction must be respected; the purpose of the work should be separately highlighted.
In chapter 2.2 (line 105), the authors report that DTA was carried out in heating and cooling modes. Why figures 4 and 5 show data only when cooling. What data scatter was observed in the two scan modes? Why are specifically the DTA cooling curves presented?
Author Response
The article presents numerous experimental results regarding the study of phase transformations in the ternary system Dy-Al-Si. Apparently, the authors tried to group the material as clearly as possible for the reader's perception. However, this does not always work out. At least, the paragraphs in the Introduction must be respected; the purpose of the work should be separately highlighted.
The introduction has been revised and implemented following the suggestion provided.
In chapter 2.2 (line 105), the authors report that DTA was carried out in heating and cooling modes. Why figures 4 and 5 show data only when cooling. What data scatter was observed in the two scan modes? Why are specifically the DTA cooling curves presented?
In this work has been studied the solidification pathway of the different alloys. The choice to use the thermal data measured by the cooling DTA curves derives, as in all our previous works on binary and ternary systems of aluminum, from the evidence that the invariant equilibria are more accurately detected on cooling, while the undercooling which affects the melting point for the aluminum alloys can be avoided if select the onset value on cooling.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
I have revised the revised form of your paper and I appreaciate that you took into account all the reviwer' comments to provide a better version of it.
Author Response
I have revised the revised form of your paper and I appreaciate that you took into account all the reviwer' comments to provide a better version of it.
I thank the Reviewer for the suggestions provided and for appreciating the review work.
Reviewer 3 Report
I recommend to improve the quality of the DTA figures. It is difficult to check the information,
Minor editing of English language required
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
I recommend to improve the quality of the DTA figures. It is difficult to check the information.
The quality of the DTA figures have been improved, following the journal indication
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Minor editing of English language required
The English language has been revised
