Evolution of Microstructure, Texture, and Mechanical Properties of As-Extruded ND/ZK60 Composite during Hot Compression Deformation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Paper is interesting, but quality of presentation is too low for publishing in current state.

Significant editing og English language must be done before considering paper. ND is used before explanation. Experimental methods aren't described in order which allows repetition of experiments.

Results presented are good, but suggestion is to benchmark them to look pure zk60 alloy prepared according to the same procedure.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I consider the topic of your research being interesting an carrying an intrinsic degree of novelty. The scientific approach you've adopted is very solid and established among meterials scientists. Nevertheless I suggest some modification to the article in order to recommend it for publication in this journal.

Here below you can find the main points I have questioned and some suggestions to improve the paper on the overall.

 

Abstract

Line 15 - please explain the meaning of the acronym ND when it first appears in the text 

Line 16 - please explain the meaning of the acronym DRX when it first appears in the text

Lines 20 - 22 - the meaning of the sentence is not clear, especially after the comma (maybe a verb is missing?). please rephrase it.

 

Introduction

Would you please define in a more exhaustive manner the reasons for producing a composite with nanodiamonds? are there other studies in literature regarding Nanodiamonds reinforced Mg alloys? 

Materials & methods

Line 73 - do the authors have any powder size distribution of the batch of powders used? have any kind of analysis been carried out on Mg alloy powders before sintering such as the evaluation of oxygen content? Oxygen is very critical for metal powders and furthermore I expect it being even more critical for Mg powders due to the extremely high reactivity of Mg to O. How were the powders obtained? 

Have you considered measuring the hardness of the composite? is it different from that of the powder metallurgical Mg alloy?

Figure 1 - please uniform the markers in the pics a,b,c and consider increasing the size of the text in fig c. Consider also changing the color of the text from black to yellow/orange (just suggestion) to improve readability.

Lines 123 - 125. Please explain why there is only mechanical/physical bonding and no chemical reaction based on the data you are referring to. What the word "chimera" is standing for?

Figure 2b - please change the colour and the size of the notes inside the pics. blue over textured dark grey is absolutely non-readable, as also red is.

Comment - have the author considered the possibility of including powder metallurgical Mg alloy samples without reinforcement, just for sake of comparison?

Lines 171 - 179 - It might be worth giving a more detailed explanation of the experiment performed whose results are shown in Fig.5. From my understanding, fig.5 reports the flow stress curves of samples loaded up to a certain percentage of strain (10, 20...). After reaching the desired strain the load was removed. in other terms, samples in fig.5 were not broken. Is it correct? Please describe moro thoroughly this part in the Materials & Methods chapter.

Fig 6 - the diagrams on the right side are difficult to read (axis titles and axis numbers).

Fig 8 - consider disassembling pic k from the figure and making it a stand alone one. In this configuration it is absolutely unreadable

A final remark...or better a repetition. It would be very interesting, if possible, comparing the properties of the reinforced alloy with those of the non-reinforced one.

Please revise thoroughly the English language of the whole article. It lacks in readability.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

 

Firstly, The whole manuscript suffers from lack of Language, ambiguity and its overloaded with grammar errors (specially sentence structuring and tenses).

• Below are my comments:

1. Abbreviations needs to be defined prior to their use. Abstract and the manuscript suffer from this point.
2. The introduction needs to be restructured with provision of more appropriate state of art. Past tense is prefered through the manuscript.
3. Line 73 - An average powder size needs to be provided. One value does not represent the powder distribution. Use of D parameters (e.g. D90) is recommended.
4. EDS data in Figure 1 needs to be explained in details. 
5. Figure 1 - The scale is unreadable. Use white scaling with appropriate font size for all the figures. Keep the figures consistent throughout the manuscript.
6. Figure 4 - Optical microscope or SEM? Mention!
7. Figure 4 - Images need to have higher resolution and almost identical brightness and contrast. The explanation in the text does not match the figures.
8. Figure 6 - Indexing and scaling needs to be changed (use white color)!
9. Figure 6 & 8 - The axis scale of misorientation angle distribution maps needs to be identical for the sake of comparison. 
10. The result section needs to be improved by providing a clearer presentation of the result.
11. Discussion - lacks structure and it is not comprehensible due to the presence of random not connected points.   

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors

 

after reading throughout the article I think the overall quality of the paper has significatively improved, thus I would recommend the paper for publication in the present form.

 

Best regards